Rebels need a finishing kick

Nobody's quite sure why UNLV insists on doing things the hard way. But that hole the Rebels climbed into when they struggled through late November and into Christmas is getting a little deeper.

At 15-9, their NCAA Tournament hopes likely riding on winning the WAC tournament and their tenuous hold on first place in the Mountain Division slip-sliding away, the Rebels find themselves in another puzzling predicament in tonight's nationally televised game with Texas Christian on ESPN.

After losing a game they simply had no business dropping Saturday to a road-weary Southern Methodist team, how does UNLV bounce back against a desperate TCU team which stubbed its own foot against last-place Air Force Saturday night and has dropped five of its last seven?

"We've got to suck it up and do a better job of running our offense," guard Greedy Daniels said. "It's about execution."

One thing that has been predictable about these unpredictable Rebels has been their inability to close out games and win the battle of the boards. It was that way before 6-foot-9 starting center Kaspars Kambala blew out his knee at Tulsa last Monday and nothing changed Saturday in the 80-78 loss to SMU.

There have been some alarming trends with this team, and one of them is a glaring failure to execute offensively in the half-court. When there have been six minutes or less remaining over the last eight games, UNLV has averaged fewer than three field goals.

Saturday, Daniels scored on a layup with just under five minutes to play. It was the last time UNLV made a shot. The Rebels still led 75-71 at that point. But without any kind of offensive output, how could they expect to hold on?

More incredible was that Shawn Marion, the team's leading scorer and best player, did not attempt a single shot over the final five minutes. He barely touched the ball, which is borderline criminal.

When asked about it, Marion, ever the diplomat, simply said, "I'm just playing ball and trying to do what I can."

Coach Bill Bayno admitted something was amiss.

"We've got to do a better job of getting him touches," he said of Marion, who was 8-of-12 from the field and led UNLV with 19 points.

And it wasn't just a matter of his star player not getting the ball that was disturbing. As the game got away, so did the chemistry, as UNLV players could be seen yelling at each other and pointing fingers with each turnover or bricked shot attempt.

Freshman guard Desmond Herod, who along with Marion was UNLV's best player on the floor against SMU, said it's time to smarten up.

"We're making bad decisions," said Herod, who had 10 points and four rebounds off the bench while once again playing good defense. "We've got to execute better."

But it has been this way for weeks.

Against Rice, UNLV had just one field goal in the final six minutes and blew a six-point lead in losing 59-55. At Air Force, the Rebels made just three field goals down the stretch and needed a Simmons free throw to win. At Tulsa, there were just three field goals during crunch time.

And the last time they played TCU, the Rebels were up 12 with six minutes to play. But again, the offense bogged down. UNLV made just three field goals, one of them a huge trey by Herod, and still it took overtime to defeat the Horned Frogs, who played virtually the entire game without their best player, center Lee Nailon.

Nailon was ejected for punching Mark Dickel in the face 34 seconds into the game at Daniel-Meyer Coliseum Jan. 23. Nailon will be on the floor tonight, and you can bet he'll be champing at the bit, especially when he sees Kambala on the sidelines with crutches.

While scoring during crunch time has been a problem, getting rebounds has been a game-long dilemma for UNLV all season, especially on the offensive glass. SMU had a 38-30 edge on the boards Saturday, 15-10 on the offensive glass.

UNLV has been out-rebounded in each of its last six games. In their nine losses this year, the Rebels have been on the short end of the boards in six of them.

Only twice during this eight-game stretch has UNLV managed to grab more offensive boards that its opponent -- the TCU win (14-13 edge) and the loss to Rice (10-9 advantage).

Part of the problem is going with a smaller, quicker lineup.

At 6-8, Simmons is UNLV's tallest player. When the Rebels go zone, which they inexplicably did for the first eight minutes of the second half Saturday, they have a tougher time boxing out because each player is not guarding a man, but an area.

SMU took advantage of the passive defense to shoot itself back into the game, as the Mustangs got uncontested looks. And the few times they missed, they were getting on the glass and beating UNLV with putbacks or reloading their offense.

Bayno said one problem feeds off the other.

"When you don't get any momentum at the defensive end, you don't get any at the offensive end," he said. "The game was won on the offensive boards. We didn't defend the way we talked about and we didn't rebound."

As for tonight, who knows what to expect? The only thing that you can probably bank on is something weird will happen, because that's the way things are when UNLV and TCU meet.

There was the rally from 20 down two years ago that enabled the Rebels to beat the Horned Frogs in Fort Worth. Later that season, there was the heated verbal confrontation between Tubbs and Bayno that nearly evolved into fisticuffs prior to the second half. And there was Nailon getting nailed for nailing Dickel in last month's game.

And if you're looking for strange, how does this sound? Maybe UNLV finds a way to score more than one or two baskets down the stretch running its half-court offense.

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