Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Rebels Basketball:

Rice hints at, but won’t commit to, lineup changes for UNLV at San Diego State

The Rebels have lost four out of five, and their coach is trying to figure out how to maximize balance of effort and production on the court

UNLV Basketball Team Defeats San Jose State

L.E. Baskow

UNLV head coach Dave Rice directs traffic versus SJS during their basketball game at the Thomas & Mack Center on Saturday, January 10, 2015. L.E. Baskow.

The Rebel Room

Has UNLV learned its lesson?

It's a pivotal week for UNLV basketball with two road games at Boise State and San Diego State. Las Vegas Sun sports writer Taylor Bern is skeptical in the wake of the Rebels' loss to UNR while sports editor Ray Brewer is ready to crown UNLV as Mountain West tournament champs.

UNLV coach Dave Rice isn’t guaranteeing lineup changes, but he saw the same things as everyone else on Tuesday at Boise State. Particularly in the first half, many Rebels looked listless and played at both ends, particularly on defense, like they didn’t care about the outcome.

The performance improved in the second half and the Rebels (10-7, 1-3) had a shot to win in regulation before getting to overtime and crumbling in a nine-point loss. That first half stuck with everyone, though, and without naming anyone Rice called out sophomore forward Christian Wood along with UNLV’s seniors on the postgame radio show.

“The sophomore needs to play better and play more consistently, and that’s the bottom line,” Rice said.

Now in the wake of that defeat, their fourth loss in the last five games, the Rebels are trying to figure out how to scrape together some momentum to get out of the conference basement. That could, and probably should, mean some lineup changes Saturday when UNLV heads into arguably the league’s most hostile environment, Viejas Arena, against a team, San Diego State (13-4, 3-1), that on Wednesday handed Wyoming its first home loss of the season.

The game tips off at 3 p.m. and will air on CBS Sports Network.

“It has to start with effort but it also has to be production,” Rice said. “… If you base it solely on effort, you probably would start Barry Cheaney."

Cheaney, a junior walk-on, isn’t likely to see playing time Saturday, but Rice is at least considering tinkering with things based on the practices in between games.

In the first half against Boise State, Wood and senior Jelan Kendrick combined to score two points on 1-of-8 shooting with four rebounds, one assist to four turnovers and several times lost track of or didn’t close out on their man defensively. They played 17 and 13 minutes, respectively.

Part of that is a lack of options. UNLV has an eight-man rotation and it hasn’t gotten a lot of production from the guys — freshmen Dwayne Morgan and Jordan Cornish — at the back end of that.

Three players average at least 31 minutes per game and five, including three true freshmen, average at least 26 minutes. No other team in the Mountain West matches either of those figures.

“If it were not my team, I’d say some of what’s gone on is the byproduct of pushing the reset button and having a lot of new guys, but that’s not how I choose to look at it because I can’t,” Rice said. “It is what it is.”

Seven players from last year’s roster left the program with eligibility remaining and another, sophomore guard Kendall Smith, transferred to Cal-State Northridge earlier this season.

Other than a short bench, the main reason Rice keeps playing Wood despite effort concerns is what the sophomore is capable of when he’s dialed in. Wood has been great at times this season and he was good for stretches of the second half, finishing with his 10th double-double.

So should Rice bench a player for lack of effort when it could cost the team a chance to win, or risk causing a rift by going with the more talented player despite their attitude? That was his dilemma Tuesday as well as at other various points this season, and it will go into his decision on what to do with the lineup against San Diego State.

The best candidate to make a permanent move into the starting lineup is freshman Pat McCaw, who already averages starters minutes (26.8) and scored a career-high 17 at Boise State. McCaw did miss a critical free throw at the end of regulation and was down on himself, but he also answered honestly after the game about what he thought some issues were in the first half.

“When guys take bad shots then other guys fall out of it,” McCaw said. “If they’re not getting enough touches then guys just don’t want to play.”

Coaches generally don’t like players speaking out about each other, but considering the source and that he said similar things on radio, Rice didn’t have much of a problem with it.

“He’s a classy young man, so when he says something there’s always some merit to it because he’s 100 percent a team guy,” Rice said.

Getting everyone in a uniform to play and support like a complete team player is the goal, one that the Rebels are clearly still striving toward. Their position in the standings should help as motivation because the status quo hasn’t been nearly good enough.

A loss Saturday would put the Rebels 3.5 games back of first place only five games into what appears to be the most wide open league race in Mountain West history. A regular season title is already all but off the table, and only drastic changes in both effort and production can save UNLV.

“We have to be desperate and I would like us to play desperate all the time,” Rice said, “whatever our record may be.”

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

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