Desi-Rae Young had 26 points and 11 rebounds and Kiara Jackson scored 16 points to help No. 25 UNLV beat Air Force 76-64 on Saturday for the Runnin' Rebels 28th straight win against Mountain West Conference opponents....
Staff writer Taylor Bern projects the standings and the all-conference team for the Moutain West Conference, which is a league almost any team could seemingly win this season.
This is the first weekend with all 10 Mountain West teams playing conference games, and it also presents the season’s first marquee intraleague matchup.
As UNLV prepares to open conference play on Saturday by hosting Air Force, it’s time to take a look around the league and roll out the Sun’s Mountain West football rankings: The Mountain Best.
This year's NCAA tournament bubble will only exist for about another 48 hours, but does it have room for one more team? New Mexico just might have a chance to get in the conversation Friday night. Though it's still a very outside possibility that the Lobos (21-11) can make themselves a legitimate at-large candidate following two months of bubble irrelevance, they'll get a shot at a third victory over Mountain West Conference co-regular season champ BYU on Friday night in the league tournament semifinals.
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — When the door to the visitor's locker room in the corner of Moby Arena swung open on Saturday night, the celebration that could be heard had an accent of relief to it. Pressure had begun to mount on UNLV in the last week, after letting a late lead slip in a 53-47 loss to No. 6 San Diego State, then winning in the ugliest of fashions over Air Force four days later, 49-42. With their NCAA tournament at-large profile on the line, the Rebels got a win that they could feel good about in Fort Collins, ...
At Thursday's practice, UNLV senior guard Tre'Von Willis ran around in a pair of his old purple and black game shorts from Washington Union High back in Fresno. Oscar Bellfield donned some black and orange trunks with a faded logo from a tournament he played in somewhere along the way and a nondescript white tank top.
UNLV losing to Colorado State at the Thomas & Mack Center was shocking enough, but how it lost was what many who watched will remember most. The Rebels were out-hustled, out-muscled and simply out-played.
Well, Saturday's first of two clashes between UNLV and New Mexico lost a lot of luster tonight. The Lobos dropped to 1-3 in the league with a loss at Utah, while UNLV is now 2-3 following a shocking 78-63 loss at the Mack to upstart Colorado State. The Rams are now 13-5 overall and 3-1 in the league, putting them in the early driver's seat for the league's potential third NCAA tournament bid.
Without hesitation, Tim Miles rattles them off from memory. "Against Wyoming, we were down 13, end up winning by 13," the fourth-year Colorado State coach begins. "Hampton had us down 17, we got back, had the lead with four seconds left. San Francisco jumped down on us by 10 or 12, we beat them. Southern Miss had us by 15, we beat them. It's been chronic." But the difference between this season and the previous few is that the Rams are in fact winning the better portion of those games.
UNLV played with a significant talent disadvantage in each of its first five losses this season. The Rebels played one of the toughest early schedules in the nation, as the five teams that beat them all made bowl games last year and three of them were ranked.
UNLV squandered one of its best chances to grab another victory Saturday afternoon in Fort Collins. UNLV and Colorado State both limped into the game with a 1-5 record. But the Rams stormed out with a resounding 43-10 victory against the Rebels.
In short, the UNLV football team now gets a chance to see if playing against mostly elite competition so far this season — and taking lumps while doing so — will pay off against a team more on its level. The Rebels (1-5 overall, 1-1 Mountain West Conference) travel for a second consecutive week, this time to face Colorado State (1-5, 0-2) in a Saturday matinee in Fort Collins, Colo.
The updated UNLV depth chart released Monday solidified what many had already expected: Star junior receiver Phillip Payne has some work to do if he wants back onto the field any time soon. Of the five names listed for the two spots, none included the 6-foot-3 Western High product, who was left home from this weekend's trip to West Virginia after making disparaging remarks regarding the program on his Twitter feed.