Mountain West play opens with scare but UNLV ends losing slide with win at GCU

The UNLV Lady Rebels have their second road win of the season after a rough start away from home.

In the team’s conference opener, UNLV dumped Grand Canyon, 61-60, Wednesday, Dec. 17 in the Antelopes first Mountain West game in program history. Over the last four seasons, the Lady Rebels hold a 52-3 record over the rest of the Mountain West.

However entering Wednesday, the program had lost five of its last eight outings including back-to-back losses.

“Yeah, [it’s probably been the toughest stretch],” head coach Lindy La Rocque said. “The last two and a half weeks, probably the last two and a half months I’ve been going through personal stuff as much as the professional and the team.”

Though reluctant to give details, La Rocque disclosed that her team is aware of her personal matters and have been by her side along the way.

“It’s just me trying to be authentic in all of my spaces,” she said. “The team knows, they’ve had my back. They’re going through some of their own things too. The only way I know how to be is me, be myself and sometimes that’s raw emotion.”

Hoping to begin a new stretch of wins, the Lady Rebels will play their first home conference game Saturday, Dec. 20 from The Pavilion against the New Mexico Lobos. Tip-off is set for 1 p.m. ahead of the men’s program taking on Fresno State at 4 p.m. from the Thomas & Mack Center.

That will be the women’s program’s first home game since November 28th with its last four games being played on the road. UNLV will enter that home game with a 6-5 overall record.

“This travel has kind of been brutal to be honest,” La Rocque said. “We have the rodeo every year but every year it feels a little different. It feels like we’ve been on the road for a month and that’s what it feels like away from my kids, away from my bed. There’s nobody happier to be having a home game than us.”

A go-ahead field goal from sophomore forward Meadow Roland with just over 12 seconds left in regulation proved to go on to be the game-winning basket. Prior to that, UNLV had gone its last 2:59 with just one made field goal.

Earlier in the fourth quarter, the team regained the lead after trailing for a good portion after halftime on the team’s first made three of the second half.

Roland finished off the win with a steal on the ensuing possession after her go-ahead basket. As a team, the Lady Rebs turned 15 turnovers into 11 points the other way.

“I thought in the fourth quarter they were really locked in,” La Rocque said. “This was one of those end of game situations and I don’t have a magic 8-ball but we practiced that exact situation, that exact play at shootaround today.”

Roland exited the game early in the third quarter after picking up her third foul of the game before finishing with four in the contest. She missed more than three minutes of game action in that third quarter due to fouls.

By the final buzzer, she had accounted for 14 points on a near perfect 7-for-8 shooting while only hauling in one rebound. In fact, the Lady Rebels were outrebounded in the win, 40-22.

That rebounding number included 17 offensive rebounds for GCU.

“Honestly, I’m going to watch the film tonight,” La Rocque said. “I thought we were more efficient offensively, we did some things but rebounding, we just have to be so much better.

“To pull out this win and frankly steal a road win in conference play to start conference play,” La Rocque said. “Being outrebounded that bad? I don’t know how it happened, honestly. We have to fix the rebounding, we have to get tougher, we have to get more physical. We have to be better otherwise we’re not going to scrape out games like this.” 

In the second quarter UNLV was held without a point for more than five minutes as Grand Canyon took a two-point lead into halftime.

The game opened on a 6-0 spurt by the Lady Rebels on the way to shooting 8-for-15 in the opening quarter. The Lopes responded with a 6-2 run to get back into the game.

GCU grabbed its first lead of the game about midway through the second quarter before going up by as many as eight in the third quarter.

Senior guard Jasmyn Lott exploded for 11 first quarter points before being held scoreless in the second. At the 7:38-mark of the third quarter, she scored her first points since the game’s opening frame.

Lott ended the night as the game’s leading scorer with 20 points on 50% shooting with two made threes.

Senior forward Shelbee Brown added 11 points and nine rebounds in 29 minutes of action.

Senior guard Aaliyah Alexander was the final Lady Rebel in double-figures with 11 points on a very efficient 3-for-6 shooting.