UNLV off to perfect conference start with winding win over Fresno State

UNLV men’s basketball has its Mountain West opener before the calendar flips to the fresh month of January for the third time in the last five years.

For just the second time in the last six showings, the Rebels were winners when it hosted Fresno State Saturday, Dec. 20 from the Thomas & Mack Center as part of a, 84-72, win. Entering play, the Runnin’ Rebels were favored by more than eight points despite losing four of their last five contests.

“Really proud of our young men,” head coach Josh Pastner said. “Boy, it’s been a roller coaster at times with us trying to settle [into] who’s playing and who’s not. We’ve kind of been the injury team in the United States of America this year.”

Now with three wins in the State of Nevada this season in nine tries, the program will look to focus on its final non-conference game of the year.

This year’s 5-6 UNLV team will look to get back to .500 with a Monday, Dec. 29 game against La Sierra. Tip-off is set for 7 p.m.

“I want us to keep having a fight about us,” Pastner said. “And just keep getting better – all we can do is keep getting better. I use the words ‘Competitive excellence” all the time.”

It was utter domination for most of the start of the game for the Rebels as they went up by as many as 16 points in the first eight-plus minutes of the game. In that first half, the home team shot 12-of-23 from the field highlighted by a 10-for-14 start.

Not long after that UNLV went without a field goal for more than eight minutes. At one point, the visitors went on a 14-0 run to trim the deficit down to a single point.

“I tell our guys all the time, ‘If you think offense first, the offense isn’t going to work,’” Pastner said. “If you think about defense first, if you think about rebounding first, if you think about, ‘I’m going to dive on the floor like Dennis Rodman used to do with the Chicago Bulls,’ [...] offense will work itself out.”

Coughing the ball up led the team to 10 turnovers in the first half which resulted in the team heading into the halftime break down two points. The Bulldogs closed the first half on a 30-12 run.

“When we’re really good defensively, we’re really good offensively,” Pastner said. “You can’t do it the other way, it just doesn’t work the other way.”

UNLV regained its footing with an 8-0 run in the second half but it would be met with a 9-2 run by Fresno State to tie the game at 54. Ultimately, the home team would end the game on a 19-8 run.

Junior guard Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn opened the game with back-to-back three-pointers early in the game before putting his team up 12 points on his third made three of the outing. He drilled four threes in the first half on his way to 16 points before the halftime break.

In fact, Gibbs-Lawhorn cashed in on the field goal with just over three and a half minutes left to put an end to that long field goal-less streak.

In the second half, Gibbs-Lawhorn set a new career-high with his sixth made trey ball of the night. He closed the night with a new career-high 28 points on 9-of-15 shooting. He now has four 20-point games this season after entering this campaign with just one.

In addition, those 28 points are the most scored by a Rebel this season.

“We had 20 assists on 28 made field goals,” Pastner said. “Nineteen for 22 from the free throw line.”

Senior forward Kimani Hamilton nailed a three-pointer to hit double-figures in the second half. He actually went on a little run late in the game that saw him score seven points en route to 20 points on a very efficient 7-of-10 shooting.

“I really challenged Kimani Hamilton at halftime,” Pastner said. “I went right at him at halftime, he was laying an egg at half. I just said, ‘Hey man’ – I’m not going to get into what I said at halftime to him but I was intense about it. No cursing because I do not curse but he received the message very well because he was a high-level dude in that second half.”

Senior guard Howie Fleming Jr. went 5-for-6 on free throws on his last three trips of the game. By doing so, he reached 11 points in the win.

Freshman forward Tyrin Jones posted a career-high 18 points in his first collegiate conference game. He did so on a perfect 7-for-7 from the field to go along with five rebounds, three assists, three blocks and a steal.

“It’s been a little bit difficult to settle on a rotation,” Pastner said. “Now we’ve been able to, hopefully, this past week to figure out who’s in and who’s out in terms of injuries.”