Result trumps execution for UNLV

It did Saturday.

It’s not often a team missing three starters and a backup center walks into the Thomas & Mack Center and pushes the Rebels to the final seconds before succumbing.

It did Saturday.

Fortunately for UNLV, so did this: Bottom lines always trump execution, be it in November or March.

"Any time you can win this time in the season and learn, it’s a good thing," Rebels coach Lon Kruger said. "We realize we have a lot of work to do. It will take time. It’s a starting point."

The fresh faces that define much of UNLV’s roster offered both good and bad in a 65-60 season-opening win against San Diego, but one theme that has characterized the Rebels for a few years again assumed a prominent role.

For better or worse, UNLV is going to shoot more 3-pointers than opponents most games. The Rebels attempted 796 last season, six fewer than the school record they shot two years ago.

It’s a pattern we’ve come to expect: The Rebels are going to shoot themselves to victories some nights and shoot themselves out of them others. They’re going to be exhilarating and exasperating to watch.

They’re also 58-15 dating to the 2006-07 season, so for the most part the strategy has worked brilliantly.

But they’re always going to be stubborn in a way that when shots don’t fall early (as they didn’t Saturday), UNLV players will continue tossing up jumpers in hopes of shooting themselves back into or extending a lead instead of forcing themselves to look inside.

To drive. To pass. To be more aggressive.

When that happens, when there is more standing than moving around the perimeter, when just 8 of 29 3s fall, a team expertly coached and yet undermanned can give UNLV and 13,436 nervous fans an enormous scare.

"We’ve just got to work more in practice and put more of an emphasis on running those plays that are designed to go inside," said senior Joe Darger, who scored 10 points and made his final two 3s after missing his first six. "I’m sure people will (continue to) zone us and see how we are shooting each night. We have to get better …

"First game. As time goes on, I’ll knock them down."

Again, such a mindset has worked more often than not. Worked to the point UNLV is making it a habit of unveiling Mountain West Conference Tournament championship banners and holding Selection Sunday parties and being expected to rule its league.

But the advantage of finally owning multiple large bodies inside so that Darger no longer has to play the role of Mini-Me guarding Triple H also should translate on the offensive end.

Darris Santee and Brice Massamba combined for nine points and seven rebounds in 37 minutes for UNLV, both centers with large learning curves still to follow. They played hard, made mistakes, looked like two guys playing their first Division I game.

But now begins the time for rotations to form and rhythm to develop. That can’t happen inside if the first instinct outside always is to shoot, sometimes ridiculously early into the clock.

Catching and shooting in a flow is one thing, but this game had none to it, mainly because the Toreros dictated what little tempo it offered.

Second-year coach Bill Grier (who obviously picked up a lifetime’s worth of tips as a 16-year assistant at Gonzaga) didn’t allow his team to be baited into a faster pace than he wanted. It was textbook San Diego basketball — a team that grinds with the best of them and always is a nuisance to try to solve.

But the impatience of UNLV also made things tighter than they should have been with San Diego center and its second-best player — Gyno Pomare — sitting on the bench serving a one-game suspension.

The Rebels might not have been able to take advantage of Pomare’s absence, but we’ll never know. They hardly tried.

"The last couple of years, we have lived a lot by the 3," Kruger said. "We need to throw it inside more. We need to move the ball around and make plays for one another."

You can argue 58-15 is proof UNLV’s standard approach is good enough. Most games, it is. Some games, it isn’t and you lose.

And some games, a team missing three starters and a backup center scares the daylights out of you before succumbing.

Ed Graney can be reached at 702-383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.