UNLV’s season ends with second round NIT loss to Tulsa

Head coach Josh Pastner’s first season with the UNLV men’s basketball program ended with an exit in the second round of the NIT.

The Runnin’ Rebels were bounced from the Tulsa Region of the bracket by the home Golden Hurricanes, 77-66, Sunday, March 22.

“Hopefully, we have some great stuff to build on,” head coach Josh Pastner said. “There were a lot of things we have to get better at but I’m really proud of establishing who we are as a culture.”

That goes down as the third loss in eight NIT games in the head coaching career of Pastner. His first season as lead man with UNLV concludes with an 18-17 overall record.

Before the most recent showing, the team won eight of its last 12 games including earning its third postseason win in as many years.

“The goal is to play in the NCAA Tournament,” Pastner said. “It’s hard now if you’re not in one of those – to get an at-large bid if you’re not in one of those Power 4s [...] You’ve got to do a great job in your non-conference but it could all come down to three games in March in the conference tournament.”

After being hampered by injuries all season long, the Rebels went into their meeting with the Golden Hurricanes down two starters in senior guard Howie Fleming Jr. and sophomore forward Jacob Bannarbie.

Between Fleming Jr. and Bannarbie, the club went into the contest missing more than 11 rebounds which showed in a big way.

“We talked about having a hit-first mentality,” Pastner said. “We had to be the more physical team and it was vice versa. They were the more physical team.”

Just over halfway into the first half, Tulsa had gobbled up 10 more rebounds than UNLV. By halftime, that gap was 15 boards on the way to an eventual 49-23 rebounding edge for the winners.

Of those 49 rebounds, 18 came on the offensive end which led to 16 second chance points.

“We took care of the ball much better in the second half,” Pastner said. “We just couldn’t rebound the ball. And that’s something we have to improve on next year is defensive rebounding. We’re not good in that discipline.”

That rebounding advantage echoed a scoreboard that saw the Rebels fall behind by double-digits early and stay there for the majority of the game. Not long after halftime, the deficit was 15 points.

Things spiraled following one of the many UNLV runs to get back into the contest. Senior forward Kimani Hamilton was whistled for a technical foul about midway through the second half with his team down nine.

Hamilton recorded nine points on 4-of-12 shooting to go along with six rebounds.

Forward Tyrin Jones helped climb out of the hole one more time to trim it down to seven just before the final horn. He scored 18 points on 7-of-9 from the field, all of which came in the paint accounting for seven of the team’s 13 layups.

Jones filled the stat sheet with eight rebounds, seven assists, three blocks and three steals.

Junior guard Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn scored 20 of his game-high 29 points in the second half. His 4-for-10 first half was reflecting of the team’s 10-for-29 first 20-minute session.

That first half included a 1-for-11 shooting mark from three-point range for UNLV. In the end, the team shot 6-of-26 from beyond the arc with five total threes coming from Gibbs-Lawhorn and freshman guard Issac Williamson, who closed the night with 10 points.

“We struggled to score in the first half,” Pastner said. “We weren’t moving the ball [or] sharing the ball. In the second half, we were much better. Obviously, Dra had some big shots there.”

Gibbs-Lawhorn’s explosion out of halftime came during one of the Rebels’ best offensive stretches of the game. As part of that spurt, the team made five straight from the field while cutting the Golden Hurricanes’ lead to five.

That would be the closest UNLV would get after falling behind by double-digits in a game where it trailed for more than 37 minutes.