Lady Rebels hope to extend season with NIT berth

UNLV had hoped to spend Thursday preparing for Friday’s Mountain West women’s basketball tournament championship game.

Instead, for the second year in a row, the Lady Rebels lost to Fresno State in the semifinals, falling 53-51 Wednesday night at the Thomas & Mack Center.

No. 7-seeded Fresno State (18-14) will meet No. 4 Boise State (24-7) at noon Friday for the conference’s NCAA Tournament automatic bid.

“It’s just hard when you work so hard, and all of a sudden it’s like, ‘OK, season’s over.’ It’s such a weird feeling?” UNLV coach Kathy Olivier said.

But there’s a good chance the season won’t be over for the Lady Rebels (22-9), who are hoping for a berth into the National Invitation Tournament. They have submitted a request to be an NIT host.

“They’ve been in contact with us, and so we’re waiting to see what happens in the tournament and with the selection show on Monday,” Olivier said.

The NCAA women’s selection show will be Monday, followed by the NIT announcement.

Colorado State (24-8), the conference’s No. 1 seed, will get an automatic bid to the NIT if it doesn’t make the NCAA Tournament field as an at-large selection. If the Rams make the NCAA field, Wyoming (21-9), the No. 2 seed, would get an automatic bid to the NIT.

There’s also a matter of who wins the conference tournament. Boise State would be more likely to get an NIT at-large berth than Fresno State.

UNLV finished third in the Mountain West after playing a competitive nonconference slate.

“We had crazy high-level intensity that first round (of the tournament). I thought Utah State, everything was clicking,” Olivier said. “That level of intensity, and that level of focus, that was just at such a high in the first round, and that’s where I don’t think we did a great job of that. … I thought that’s where Fresno had us.”

Afterward, Olivier said there was a mixture of sadness and disappointment in the locker room.

“We have a really tight group in the sense that we all work extremely hard, and we’re all very passionate, and it’s hard when you’re up there and you’re looking at a group of 12 that don’t want it to be over. They had their eyes on NCAA,” Olivier said. “They were down, and it’s very hard to go into a locker room after a 22-win season and what we have fought through, (the) adversity that we have fought through is crazy.”

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Contact Betsy Helfand at bhelfand@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BetsyHelfand on Twitter.