Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

REBELS BASKETBALL:

No. 24 UNLV out for fifth straight victory against struggling UNR

Despite slow start for Wolf Pack, Rebels trying to treat rivalry game same as always

2009-2010 UNLV Basketball

Sam Morris / Las Vegas Sun

UNLV guard Justin Hawkins and UNR forward Joey Shaw fight for a loose ball during the first half of their game Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at the Thomas & Mack Center.

While UNLV continues its hot start to the season and begins an ascent up the Top 25 rankings, things haven’t gone so well for the Rebels’ rivals up north.

UNLV (7-0) and UNR (1-5) will meet at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Lawlor Events Center, but the matchup doesn’t have nearly as much steam going in as it did in recent years.

Gone are former stars Luke Babbitt and Armon Johnson, who bolted following last season as early entrants in the NBA draft. They’re currently teammates with the Portland Trailblazers.

As the coach who recruited them — Mark Fox — is thriving in his new post at Georgia, his replacement — David Carter — is having a tough time molding what’s left into a winner.

After downing Montana in its season opener, 81-66, the Wolf Pack has dropped five in a row. The most recent setback came Tuesday night, in an 82-65 rout at South Dakota State.

The slump was started by a three tough losses. After blowing a one-point halftime lead against Pacific on Nov. 15, an 11-point loss was the result. The Pack then lost its next two games to Pepperdine and George Washington by a combined margin of three points.

“They’re not that far away from feeling pretty good about what’s happened so far,” UNLV coach Lon Kruger said. “It’s a rivalry game. We’ll go in there expecting UNR to play really well and really hard. “

As has been the issue over the past couple of seasons, the Wolf Pack’s biggest deficiency is depth.

Junior forward Dario Hunt and sophomore guard Malik Story are carrying the load. The 6-foot-8 Hunt is averaging 12.8 points and 7.5 rebounds per game, while Story has been hot from the floor, fueling his 10.8 scoring average with 57.7 percent shooting from 3-point range.

The struggles, however, could be looked at as growing pains.

The Wolf Pack are young, with just one senior — reserve forward Adam Carp — on the roster. The rest of the returners are getting used to life without having two NBA-caliber players to lean on.

UNR is sure to get a boost at the end of the fall semester, when 6-foot-7 Duke transfer Olek Czyz is eligible to take the floor, but he can’t help Saturday night.

Carter’s club will entertain a UNLV team that is playing some of the most consistent basketball not just on the West Coast, but in the nation.

While shooting at a 53.1 percent clip, UNLV so far is holding opponents to just 35.1 percent consistency from the floor. Only two opponents so far have shot better than 40 percent against the Rebels, who are pressuring in the backcourt relentlessly so far.

“I have a lot of confidence that our guys are going to line up and go really hard, because they’ve done that every game so far,” Kruger said. “You have to love the consistency. When you think about the number of stretches where offensively or defensively they  haven’t been good, there haven’t been many of them and they’ve been relatively short. That’s great.”

UNLV has also been consistent in its results against UNR, having won four in a row in the series.

The game will be the final piece of a brutal five-game stretch away from Las Vegas that began with the team leaving for the 76 Classic in Anaheim, Calif., last Tuesday.

After returning late Sunday night, the Rebels were again on the road 36 hours later. They arrived back from Wednesday night’s 82-51 drubbing of Illinois State on Thursday afternoon and, after originally intending to practice, were given the day off by Kruger.

Their next home game won’t be until Dec. 15 against UC Santa Barbara, but they’ll play on Wednesday night at the Orleans Arena, as Boise State comes to town in a primer for next weekend’s trip to Louisville.

Got all of that down?

The non-stop, travel-heavy pace of the past couple of weeks has made preparing for final exams next week difficult for the players, but it’s also kept the coaching staff from running the team through a full-speed practice, as to conserve as much energy as possible.

Still, the team’s maturity is shining through on the trip, as the players have begun to critique themselves effectively, and know what kind of showing will be needed against the Wolf Pack.

“It’s a rivalry game. We’re going into their place, so we know the crowd’s going to be electric,” sophomore guard Anthony Marshall said. “We just have to go out there and do what we did (on Wednesday night) from the start and not wait until after the first timeout and stuff like that.”

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