Take 5: Rebels shift lineup ahead of week on the road

By Taylor Bern

Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016 | 2 a.m.

A week off after opening Mountain West play with a loss isn’t what anyone at UNLV would prefer, but that’s what they got and now it’s time to see what the Rebels did with that time.

“Practice has been good but it really doesn’t matter,” said UNLV coach Dave Rice. “What matters is how we perform on Wednesday.”

The Rebels (9-5) have lost three of four entering a 7 p.m. Las Vegas time tip-off against a Colorado State (8-6) team whose only Division I victory in the last month was at home against South Carolina-Upstate. The game will air on CBS Sports Network.

It’s a big week for the Rebels and it starts with a change to the rotation:

1. Straight to the Point

Sophomore Pat McCaw is taking over for senior Jerome Seagears as UNLV’s primary point guard, Rice said on Tuesday. The Rebels are hoping they can fix a few issues with this one move.

One is to try to shake a funk for McCaw, who has had four of the worst games of his career in the last six games. That culminated in Wednesday’s effort, when McCaw committed a season-high five turnovers in a season-low 18 minutes.

“If it takes him stepping out of his comfort zone to be aggressive and be a little selfish at times, so be it. Because we need that,” said junior forward Ben Carter.

Added freshman Stephen Zimmerman Jr., “If we’re OK with anyone being selfish, it’s Pat.”

The change makes sense on the other side, too, because Seagears’ turnover rate was the second worst on the team, and it’s reasonable to expect that by moving off the ball more his career-low 30.6 3-point field goal percentage this season could rise closer to the 37.3 percent career average Seagears had at Rutgers. This also could clear out a more defined role as backup point guard for Jalen Poyser, who over his last seven games has 10 assists to three turnovers while shooting 52 percent from the field.

Poyser provides a deep threat (13-of-22 on 3s) that’s been missing this season, and his minutes could continue to increase in conference play. But ultimately this move is to try to clean up the offense by putting a charge into UNLV’s best overall player.

“Obviously (McCaw) can still get assists and get rebounds and be a defensive stopper, but we absolutely need his points and we need him to be very, very aggressive on the offensive end,” Rice said.

2. Big Man Shots

Another benefit of McCaw running the point is that his decision making should lead to more of the shots Rice and the Rebels want, which are ones generated by the frontcourt.

“The biggest thing is we’ve got to get the ball on the block to Dwayne to Zimm to Ben Carter,” Rice said. “Whether it’s the low block or mid-post, good things happen when those guys touch the ball.”

Rice has often said that he needs at least Carter or Zimmerman on the court at all times, yet the offense ignored them at the end of the Fresno State loss. The duo combined for only 11 shots in the game and almost never touched the ball in the last five minutes of the conference-opening defeat.

Zimmerman played a season-high 34 minutes in that game, and keeping him healthy for a few games in a row would be a good place for the Rebels to start. But they also need Zimmerman to fix some things and get better finishing out of post ups, because it only makes sense to force feed the ball down there if the bigs can make something happen with it.

3. Mopey at Moby

Last year it came down to the final shot, and the year before that it was tied for Rice’s second biggest defeat in a conference game. What hasn’t changed in four trips to Colorado State’s Moby Arena is the result as Rice is 0-4. It’s the only Mountain West road arena in which he hasn’t won.

It’s not a particularly intimidating environment — CSU’s average home attendance this season is 3,650, although at least one of UNLV’s previous trips was a sellout — and the element of altitude isn’t much different from what the Rebels face at places like Wyoming and Air Force. So there’s no reason to think Rice can’t go in and get a victory, other than the fact he hasn’t been able to do it yet.

4. Rams Roster

There aren’t many familiar faces from last year’s roster, and even one of the guys who was still around (senior guard Gian Clavell) won’t play the rest of the year after he went down in mid-December with a hand injury. Clavell was the team’s leading scorer and since then it’s been mostly senior guard Antwan Scott trying to pick up a more consistent scoring role.

The Rams do still have John Gillon and Joe De Ciman, but there’s also senior Tiel Daniels taking on a larger role after spending his first two seasons at Southern Illinois and junior college transfer Emmanuel Omogbo (6-foot-8, 210 pounds) isn’t a particular efficient scorer but he takes the majority of CSU’s 2-point shots.

In his first three seasons, CSU coach Larry Eustachy’s teams never ranked outside the top 20 in defensive rebounding percentage or outside the top 75 in offensive rebounding percentage. This year they’re at 53 and 119, respectively, and that shows in part that they haven’t been able to overcome other deficiencies with rebounding the way they normally can.

5. Real Road Trip

The drive from Wednesday’s game in Fort Collins, Colo., to Saturday’s game in Laramie, Wyo., is about an hour, so the Rebels are staying on the road. However, they’ll probably do a lot more driving than just that.

School isn’t in session until next week, otherwise UNLV would still likely go back in between. Rice said the team might go practice down in Denver — a little more than an hour south of Fort Collins — on Thursday or Friday before going back up to Laramie for the second leg of their back-to-back.

One big benefit to staying on the road in between games is that it gives the Rebels’ bodies more time to get acclimated to the altitude for the second game. That will mean a whole lot more to them if they’re able to win the first one.

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