Rice not happy with Rebels’ performance in 37-point exhibition victory

By Taylor Bern

Friday, Nov. 6, 2015 | 11 p.m.

In many ways this is an all-or-nothing season for fifth-year UNLV coach Dave Rice, so a week before the 2015-16 campaign officially gets underway Rice spent some extra time in the locker room following a 37-point exhibition victory. And it wasn’t to congratulate anybody.

UNLV dispatched Whittier, a Division III program near Los Angeles, with ease Friday night at the Thomas & Mack Center. What Rice didn’t like was how sloppy the Rebels were on their way to the 94-57 victory.

Freshmen Stephen Zimmerman Jr. (13 points, 11 rebounds, four blocks) and Derrick Jones Jr. (20 points in 21 minutes) both dazzled, but turnovers, defensive rebounding and shot selection, particularly in the second half, were all issues. With a tough Cal Poly team a week away in the regular-season opener and the Maui Jim Maui Invitational a little more than two weeks away, Rice wanted to make sure the players knew this performance wasn’t good enough.

“I don’t want this to seem like it’s all negative,” Rice said, “we’re just trying to be a great team.”

Bumps were expected, but tonight’s second half was more than the Rebels could stand. Twelve of their 18 turnovers were committed in the second half, and the same goes for eight of the 17 offensive rebounds they allowed.

Rice explained that some of the rebounding issues were caused by Whittier’s small, five-guard lineup. They were so spread out that it was harder for UNLV’s bigs to get a body on them.

“It’s no excuse,” said sophomore Jordan Cornish, who gave the team a D+. “We’ve got to be better.”

Senior guard Jerome Seagears, who played his first game in 20 months, seemed less concerned. Seagears played in a few exhibition games at Rutgers and he felt this played out like many do with the home team playing down to the competition, especially when the scoreboard was already lopsided.

“We’ve got some things to work on but that just comes with time,” Seagears said.

Senior Ike Nwamu scored 12 points and Seagears chipped in 11 with seven assists. Sophomore Pat McCaw filled up the box score with nine points, four steals, three rebounds, three assists and four turnovers, and in the first half he was the biggest outlier to UNLV’s minutes distribution.

Part of the full-court pressure defense the Rebels are rolling with requires moving bodies in and out of the game much more often than in recent years. Four of the starters went to the bench before the 16-minute mark, and of 26 first-half individual runs — the actual time a player spent on the court in between stints on the bench — 18 of them lasted less than four minutes.

It’s a noisy stat, admittedly, because it’s only one game and Rice said the rotation isn’t exactly what it will be moving forward. But accepting that, you can start to look for trends, and Friday’s examples were Zimmerman and McCaw, who led the team with 28 and 26 minutes played, respectively.

McCaw stayed on the court for nearly 10 minutes during one first-half stretch, an indication that his versatility will help him remain on the court whereas Seagears got to his 24 minutes with frequent trips to the scorer’s table to check in and out of the game.

For more of the positives, look no further than UNLV’s downtown dunk champion. While Zimmerman, a top-10 recruit out of Bishop Gorman High, has been a known commodity for years, Jones is sort of a mystery box outside of his prodigious leaping abilities.

Jones has done a lot to make himself a clearer picture, from leading the team in scoring at last week’s closed-door scrimmage at USC to doing it again against Whittier, all without a play actually being called for him.

“He gets his opportunities in the flow of the offense,” said Rice, who compared Jones to former Rebel Shawn Marion.

Rice’s job was on the line at the end of last season, and now that he’s back he’d rather not go back to the brink. The regular season is a week away, and for what the Rebels have in mind, the particulars of this 37-point victory weren’t good enough.

Carter back soon

Junior forward Ben Carter missed Friday’s exhibition game while recovering from a concussion he suffered last weekend, but Rice said they expect Carter to return to practice on Sunday. The Bishop Gorman High grad who redshirted last year after transferring in from Oregon is expected to compete for minutes as one of the first guys off the bench.

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