Jones’ block saves Rebels as lead slips against Cowboys, set up 3rd meeting with Aggies

More than one time this season, a block from freshman forward Tyrin Jones saved the game for the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels. He did it again in the program’s biggest game of the year so far.

Jones’ swat helped secure a, 73-70, win over the Wyoming Cowboys Wednesday, March 11 from the Thomas & Mack Center as part of the 8-9 matchup of the Mountain West Championships. After only playing once in the regular season, the Rebels avenged their 32-point loss to the Cowboys back in early January.

“I really believe this in life, life, everything is deeper than it looks on the surface,” head coach Josh Pastner said. “The Mountain West Conference Tournament has just been really hard for UNLV, that they've been 0 for 10 in the last decade, beating a team that's not named Air Force in the last decade.”

Going back to the regular season, UNLV has won four of its last six contests as it improves to 17-15 this season. Moreover, the team picked up its first neutral site win of the year despite being inside the Thomas & Mack Center.

Prior to Wednesday, the program was 0-4 in neutral site games this season with all four contests coming in Las Vegas.

“Look, these guys are young guys,” Pastner said. “They just got to compete. You've got to be a competitor. We’re in good cardiovascular health. That's been important to me. I'm a big believer in VO2 max, cardiovascular shape. Our guys have been in good condition. Look at our guys. We play a lot of minutes for the whole season for the most part.”

It will go for two straight neutral site wins when it takes on the top-seeded Utah State Aggies Thursday, March 12 at noon. UNLV will have a chance at a third win over the previously ranked team after sweeping the regular season series.

“Regarding Utah State, they are just, Jerrod Calhoun does a great job,” Pastner said. “Outstanding coach. They're a great basketball team. They're really a high-level group. I mean, any job that opens for anywhere in the country, Jerrod Calhoun is going to have his pick of which job that he wants.

“They've got a lot of great players, they play hard, they're well-coached and we're going to have to play our best game of the season if we want to have an opportunity to win the game.”

Before the start of the Mountain West Championships, Jones was recognized as a conference all-defensive team member. To conclude his first-ever game in the tournament, he showed why he was selected.

Jones skied through the air and sent back a floater following an offensive rebound by Wyoming. If converted, it would’ve given the nine seed a one-point lead.

“Tyrin Jones led the conference in shot-blocking,” Pastner said. “He had six this afternoon. It's the first time a guy at UNLV has led the league in Mountain West conference in shot-blocking since the '14-'15 season.”

In the win, Jones posted six blocks to go along with seven points and five rebounds.

While the block helped win the game for the Rebels, it also prevented a huge collapse that would’ve seen the team blow a 16-point first half lead.

In the midst of making eight straight shots from the field and playing a staunch 2-1-2 zone defense, the 16-point lead was built.

“I would say [it started] defensively,” junior guard Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn said. “We had two early kills, and that comes with rebounding, communication on defense, but especially rebounding, getting the ball out and just going.”

Wyoming headed into halftime down 13 while missing nine straight shots at one point of the first half on the way to shooting 12-for-38 to open the game.

Right after halftime, the Cowboys began cutting into that lead. The deficit would be trimmed all the way down to a single point before the No. 9 seed in the bracket took its first lead since being up, 4-3, in the first half.

Ultimately, UNLV found itself down three as a result of the Wyoming run. In the final 3:52 of regulation, there were five lead changes and three ties.

Additionally, UNLV committed eight fouls in the first 5:42 of the second half. In total, six players logged two or more fouls with two tallying four and every single player accumulating at least one.

“I thought our late-game execution, which has been pretty good for the most part for a lot of this year,” Pastner said. “We've won a lot of close games. We're 3-0 in overtime. We've won a lot of close games. So our late-game execution really was at a high level.”

Things could’ve been a bit more calm for the Rebels had the team made more of its free throw attempts. As a collective, the team went 19-for-31 from the free throw line.

Already up four, senior forward Walter Brown missed two free throws after Wyoming had been called for a flagrant-1 foul.

Brown would make up for those missed free throws with two threes late in regulation. The first of which gave his team a, 63-62, lead heading into a timeout while the second regained the lead after the Cowboys took a brief lead plus the foul.

By the final buzzer, Brown finished one point shy of a double-double with nine points and 10 rebounds.

Senior forward Kimani Hamilton also converted a late and-one to put his team up a point. Soon after, he added two more insurance free throws for the three-point advantage.

Hamilton led all scorers with 23 points while also going 9-for-12 from the charity stripe.

“I told Kimani the second half, Kimani, take over,” Gibbs-Lawhorn said. “I said, just take over. That's what he did, man. We've been saying that all year. When you have Kimani playing more than 30 minutes a game, it's going to be hard to beat us with how locked in we've been defensively.”

Just before Jones’ game-sealing block, Hamilton forced an airball after switching onto Wyoming’s Nasir Meyer.

“We wanted to get the switch on that last play,” Pastner said. “Like I said, we've been executing -- we've executed a lot at a high level late-game not only in this game, but in a lot of games, especially in the late games. We've done a nice job of our execution.”

After leading the team and the conference in scoring, Gibbs-Lawhorn scored 15 points in the first half after being named to the conference’s All-Mountain West First Team. After averaging less than five points a game in his career prior to this year, he poured in 21 points a game in his first season with the Rebels.

However, in the second half, Gibbs-Lawhorn would be held scoreless on six misses. His final stat line read 15 points on 4-of-13 shooting while playing all 40 minutes.

“I feel like it's very important for everyone to know that we have a bunch of players on this team that can play basketball too – that are good at basketball too,” he said. “Earlier in the year, things just happened to go my way, but there are multiple people on this team that can do the same thing, if not better than I can.”