UNLV begins long road with a true exhibition
Everything happens faster now. Teams are dissected. Roles are defined. Judgments are made.
College basketball’s most important month is March, but that’s not to say what sort of season a team might produce isn’t created much earlier.
“I do think there is more pressure now to (win early),” UNLV coach Dave Rice said. “I know when I’m watching games in November like everyone, I will hear a commentator say things like, ‘That is really going to impress the (NCAA Tournament) selection committee.’
“You think to yourself, ‘That’s a long time from now.’ But it’s also reality.”
It will be something to watch, how quickly Rice can settle on a rotation with a team whose key players include several who have never competed in a regular-season college game.
What the Rebels encountered Wednesday — a 100-65 victory against an outfit named Florida National before a heavily inflated announced gathering of 10,253 at the Thomas &Mack Center — was an exhibition is every sense of the word.
Rice should immediately offer the Conquistadors, who didn’t exist two years ago and compete in something called the United States Collegiate Association, a 10-year deal to show up annually for such beginnings.
They are the perfect exhibition foil, although UNLV players insisted they watched film on Florida National when preparing.
Quipped one reporter: “It was probably shot with an iPhone.”
Exhibitions always should be about the bigger, stronger, much better team working on different aspects of their scheme and learning throughout a comfortable win. Sometimes, Dixie State just doesn’t get the memo.
It’s different when the lights come on and officials are working. It’s even more different when the exhibition part of your schedule begins. It’s another world when games begin to count, as they will for UNLV when it opens the season against visiting Morehead State on Nov. 14.
Evaluating much of anything off such an outcome as Wednesday is nearly impossible and often unfair. Even the most veteran of teams would struggle maintaining intensity throughout such a 40-minute exercise. Shot selection will worsen as the margin grows. Defensive focus will waiver. They’re kids. They can read a scoreboard and see the guy who is 4 inches shorter standing next to them.
“We have a lot to work on defensively,” senior point guard Cody Doolin said.
But it’s important to win, whether it’s an intrasquad scrimmage or an exhibition game or a season opener at home. It’s critical a side with as many new faces as UNLV gains confidence early when you consider what lies ahead.
It’s impossible to know how UNLV will emerge from its nonconference schedule, but certainly true that it’s one of the nation’s tougher challenges in terms of quality opponents. You don’t contest Stanford and Arizona State and Utah and Arizona and Kansas and possibly Duke and not understand who you are before Mountain West play begins.
“It was good to get out and play another opponent and see where we are at,” Rice said. “Each time we have been in front of fans, we have gotten better. We told the guys before the game and during it and after it, we’re not just looking at X’s and O’s and game adjustments. We’re looking at how guys act coming off the floor and free throws and taking charges and diving for loose balls. In terms of those things, we’re way ahead.
“Guys start to see rotations and who starts and all those things. I’m not necessarily looking for the best five guys on the floor, but the best five who play together. We have a lot of guys who have never played a Division I game, but that’s what we have, so we have to play hard and play together.”
The Rebels are all sorts of talented in spots, so it’s intriguing to envision what that might mean when individuals become a team. Doolin could never score (he won’t much, anyway) and still has every chance to be UNLV’s most important player as the Rebels mature through good times and bad. He had nine assists and one turnover Wednesday. That’s known as a fairly incredible ratio.
It’s a process. The next step, a closed-door scrimmage at UCLA on Saturday, will afford UNLV’s coach a far better gauge about where his team is as the season beckons.
Just a guess: UNLV won’t have 64 rebounds against the Bruins, as it did against Florida National.
“We have to have a mindset of just winning the next game, no matter who the opponent is,” UNLV freshman Goodluck Okonoboh said. “It’s much easier said than done. It’s human nature to wonder about things like rotations, but if you’re a good player, you’re going to see the floor. If you can play, you can play.”
UNLV has a bunch of guys who can play, but most questions about the Rebels remain unanswered.
You play Florida National for the atmosphere as much as the competition.
You don’t expect to learn much against the perfect exhibition foil.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 98.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.
