Rebels leave Players Era Championship winless after losing lead against Rutgers

Even a change of venue couldn’t shake UNLV men’s basketball out of its funk as its losing slide was extended Thursday afternoon as its tough week continues.

On the last day of the Players Era Championship, UNLV sank in the second half against Rutgers and fell, 80-65, Thursday, Nov. 27 from the Michelob Ultra Arena. While going 0-3 in the tournament, the Rebels are now on a season-long three-game losing streak.

“It was pretty much a tale of two halves,” head coach Josh Pastner said. “I felt all three games we played in this tournament we looked small. I just thought we were a small team, we were definitely the smallest team in this field.”

In an interesting note, despite playing this tournament in all “neutral” site games, UNLV is now 2-5 when playing in Las Vegas this season. Overall, the team is 3-5 on the year with another true road test on the way.

It will visit Stanford Sunday, Dec. 7. Tip-off is set for 1p.m.

“Tough week for sure but we’ll get better,” Pastner said. “First and foremost, need to get healthy, need to get some guys back. And through time we’ll just keep improving and plugging along.”

A six-point lead at halftime wasn’t nearly enough for the Rebels as they were thoroughly outplayed in the second half. The Scarlet Knights raced out of halftime with a 6-0 run to tie the game at 39 apiece. That spurt would be stretched to 11-0, forcing a timeout from Pastner before the first media timeout was taken.

At that time, UNLV had gone three minutes and 42 seconds without a point to start the second half.

“It was like the Maryland game,” Pastner said. “We were up six with like 10 minutes to go in the second half and lost it. I thought here, we’re up six, we had control of the game and I just thought we ran out of gas.”

Later in the second half, the Rebels would go more than four minutes without a field goal. All the while, the Scarlet Knights were creating distance on the scoreboard.

In total, UNLV was held to 10-of-28 in the second half. A good portion of that came as a result of the full-court press defense by Rutgers.

“The full-court press was a man-to-man,” Pastner said. “We had to call timeout that one time but then another time, [junior guard Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn] passed it to [senior forward Walter Brown] for no reason [...] In the end it wasn’t the press, we missed a lot of shots. Even in the first half, we had some times to really open it up [and] we missed some layups and wide-open threes.”

As for the Rebels’ defense, it was able to turn its opponent over 10 times while converting them into 15 points on the other end of the floor.

Even while doing that, the club had a hard time guarding center Emmanuel Ogbole, who posted a career day in both points and rebounds. He recorded 21 points and 13 rebounds in the win for Rutgers.

UNLV was outrebounded by 14 in the loss.

“That was the tell kind of all week,” Pastner said. “We got beat up inside on the defensive glass. Our lack of size really stood out, from top-to-bottom. Obviously, a lot of that was our bigs are not playing.”

Down the stretch, the Rebels had to play without senior forward Kimani Hamilton who fouled out for the fourth time this season. Of those four times, three of them have come in consecutive games, every game of the Players Era Championship.

In that first half and for the majority of his time on the floor, Hamilton was the main offensive catalyst for UNLV. He tallied 12 points in the first half on a perfect 4-for-4 from the field with a made three and a perfect 3-for-3 mark from the free throw line.

He finished with 13 points on 4-of-7 shooting with seven rebounds.

Hamilton was the lone Rebels in double-figures until late in regulation.

Gibbs-Lawhorn hit double-digits for the seventh time this season. He added five assists and three rebounds to go along with his 10 points.

Freshman forward Tyrin Jones was tied with Hamilton for the team-lead with 13 points on 6-of-11 shooting while also blocking three shots.

Senior guard Al Green was the only UNLV bench player to hit double-figures and was one of only two players in the game to do so. He tallied 13 points on 5-of-11 shooting in just under 22 and a half minutes of play.

Since moving to the bench, Green is averaging 6.4 points per game with the most recent 13 points scored being his season high.

Freshman forward Naas Cunningham returned to the lineup after missing the team’s last outing with an ankle issue. He jumped back into action with seven points in more than 22 minutes of on-court action 

Sophomore forward Jacob Bannarbie (calf) missed all three of UNLV’s games at the Players Era Championship. In addition, junior forward Ladji Dembele was back in a boot Friday afternoon after discovering he re-fractured his right foot.

“Having guys in and out of the lineup has been challenging for us,” Pastner said. “To figure out and get a feel for our main rotation. And having to move guys to different spots on the floor.”