Rebels trying to avoid regular season sweep against Wolf Pack

By Taylor Bern

Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016 | 2 a.m.

UNLV interim coach Todd Simon was 3-0 when the Rebels went to Reno. Since then the Rebels have lost two key players, Ben Carter and Stephen Zimmerman Jr., and lost five of eight games, including that first meeting with the Wolf Pack.

It was an emotional victory for UNR and first-year coach Eric Musselman, who was fist-pumping and celebrating in front of the student section after the Wolf Pack defeated UNLV for the fourth time in six meetings. For the Rebels, it proved that a coaching change was not a cure-all as their familiar problems with execution led to a late collapse and the loss.

“We know we let one get away from us,” senior guard Jerome Seagears said.

That’s happened several times this season, and UNLV (15-12, 6-8) will try to move forward from those struggles and snap UNR’s three-game winning streak tonight at 7 when the teams meet at the Thomas & Mack Center. The game will air on CBS Sports Network.

UNR (16-9, 8-5) is almost the perfect average team in the Mountain West. Currently tied for third in the league standings, the Wolf Pack is 7-0 against the league’s bottom five teams, including UNLV, and 1-5 against the top six.

It might not be great, but the Wolf Pack beats the teams it’s supposed to. Then last Saturday’s home overtime victory against Fresno State was a big step because it was UNR’s first victory against one of the top-half teams and it also helped the team get on a little roll here with three straight victories and six in the last eight.

“We wanted to get as much momentum as we could going into Thomas & Mack,” UNR senior Marqueze Coleman told the Reno Gazette-Journal. “The environment is going to be crazy after how we won the last game in our place.”

Coleman scored only six points in his last trip to the Mack, but he had the crucial jumper in the final seconds to lift UNR to a 64-62 victory. That memory is fresh in Coleman’s mind as the Wolf Pack hunt for what would be their fifth season sweep of UNLV in 30 attempts.

“The environment is crazy. It’s a hostile crowd. We love the student section,” Coleman said. “We just really want to get after them again and sweep them this season.”

To prevent that, the Rebels can’t get into a foul situation like the one they had in Tuesday’s 79-74 loss at Air Force. The long-expected situation of sophomore Dwayne Morgan and freshman Derrick Jones Jr. both sitting with four fouls occurred with more than nine minutes remaining, and that scenario will almost always spell doom for the Rebels.

“We have to be able to figure out ways to keep, particularly, Dwayne and Derrick on the floor together,” Simon said.

Playing at home, where UNLV is whistled for fewer fouls, will help, but the Rebels are still counting on those guys to stay out of trouble. Jones fouled out of the Air Force game because he put himself in a bad position about 35 feet from the basket, and the balance of aggressive but smart will play out in every UNLV game the rest of the season.

Sometimes it works out for the Rebels and sometimes it works against them, but either way it very much dictates what they’re able to accomplish throughout the game because the team is still at its best when it’s applying defensive pressure. And to do that UNLV needs one, and preferably both, of its modified big men on the floor.

“We can’t really press that much because we won’t have subs at the end of the game,” Seagears said.

But if they don’t press early enough, will UNLV be in some of these remaining games? After this the Rebels have trips to Boise State and San Diego State sandwiched around Wyoming at home. They’ll be underdogs in the road games before being pegged as one of the favorites in the Mountain West tournament largely because it’s held in the Mack and nobody’s very confident in the rest of the league.

There’s a lot stacked against the Rebels, who don’t know when or if Zimmerman will return from his knee sprain this season, but they could at least help themselves mentally by winning a close game. Tonight could provide that opportunity and another chance to see what the Rebels have learned.

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