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March 18, 2024

UNLV Basketball:

Blog: Rebels bounce back from ugly loss with 57-50 win against Temple

UNLV vs. Temple

Seth Weng / AP

UNLV’s Dwayne Morgan, right, fouls Temple’s Mark Williams during the first half of a game for third place in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic on Saturday, Nov. 22, 2014, in New York.

Updated Saturday, Nov. 22, 2014 | 6:16 p.m.

UNLV 57, Temple 50

Game over

Christian Wood scored a career-high 18 points to go along with 13 rebounds and four blocks while leading UNLV to a 57-50 comeback victory against Temple that salvages the Rebels' trip out to Brooklyn.

After the 29-point loss Friday to Stanford the most important question was how the Rebels would respond. It wasn't always pretty and it remained low scoring, but they battled from the start and came out of halftime really well to take a lead that they wouldn't relinquish the rest of the game.

Rashad Vaughn never got out of his offensive funk, shooting 2-for-10, and that would be OK except that his defense didn't appear to be any better. Vaughn had to sit for long stretches of the second half but fellow freshman Pat McCaw was really solid once again and helped pick up some of the slack.

McCaw and a couple other Rebels scored seven while Cody Doolin finished with 10 points and five assists.

Check lasvegassun.com later tonight for a full report from UNLV's victory.

Well, that didn't really go as planned, did it? UNLV's first step up in competition ended with a 29-point loss to Stanford. Now, less than 24 hours later, the Rebels are back on the court looking to rebound and get a split out of this trip to Brooklyn.

The Rebels (2-1) tip against Temple (2-1) at 4 p.m. Las Vegas time at the Barclays Center. The game will air on truTV.

Friday's game couldn't have gone much worse from the tip. The Cardinal raced out to a double-digit lead in the first two minutes and never looked back.

Games similar to that one were expected this season, though not to that degree against this opponent. It was the largest margin of defeat in coach Dave Rice's three-plus seasons at UNLV, and although it appeared the Rebels never gave up on the game, they never got the deficit within 23 in the final 16 minutes.

The best way to ease the sting of that defeat is with a good bounce-back today. Most reasonable people figured a good weekend for the team meant returning 1-1, though many of those people were either hoping that one victory would be against Stanford or that the loss at least wouldn't have been as bad.

Here were the issues that most need correcting from that game, as far as I see it: The most important is closing out on shooters. I saw a bunch of people complaining about UNLV staying in a zone for pretty much the entire game after the first couple of possessions, and while I don’t entirely disagree, I don’t think it mattered what they were in if they weren’t going to close out hard with their hands up.

Even in man, you’re going to have to recover and chase a shooter off the line, yet UNLV’s defenders basically did none of that. Maybe man would help in that regard, maybe not, but the recognition clearly wasn’t there.

Then there’s rebounding, which again was a big issue. Stanford won the rebounding total 47-29 overall and 16-11 on offensive rebounds. Same as with guarding properly, most would argue that man helps in that regard, but that doesn’t mean that when you play in zone you shouldn’t be able to still grab rebounds and challenge shooters.

Offensively, I’m not even sure where to begin. The performance against Stanford was eerily similar to a lot of games we’ve seen in recent years with guys standing around the perimeter and no one penetrating into the lane.

Basically, the Rebels need to play better in every conceivable way than yesterday, and it's unlikely they get help from sophomore guard Kendall Smith, who's expected to miss his second game with an ankle injury. The result, either way, will be telling.

Bern’s prediction: Anytime someone asked me about this weekend, I said UNLV would go 1-1, so I’ll stick with that. It’s not going to be easy, though. UNLV 63, Temple 61

Taylor Bern can be reached at 948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Taylor on Twitter at twitter.com/taylorbern.

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