Rebels flatten Horned Frogs

Willis and Stanback each scored 16 points to power the Rebels to a 78-62 victory over Texas Christian on Wednesday night at the Thomas & Mack Center.

"Those guys are the keys to what we’re doing offensively," coach Lon Kruger said. "Every club has got a couple guys, or two or three guys, that need to be clicking to be at its best. I think we really need Tre and Chace to be doing that.

"Chace can do a little bit of everything."

Stanback filled the stat sheet by shooting 7-for-14 from the field and adding seven rebounds, six assists, three steals and two blocked shots.

"It’s nice if we both get it going a little bit," said Willis, who shot 5-for-7 from the field and totaled four rebounds, three assists and three steals. "But it was a total team effort."

Kendall Wallace made four 3-pointers for the Rebels, who improved to 21-7 and 9-5 in the Mountain West Conference.

Brice Massamba had 10 points and nine rebounds, and Oscar Bellfield, Anthony Marshall and Darris Santee each scored six points.

Reeling from a losing skid a week ago, the Rebels have responded by making a mockery of their past two opponents, first by crushing Colorado State 70-39 on Saturday.

"Obviously, that was the roughest stretch of the season. Everything seemed so bad at that time," Willis said. "But we knew we were going to regroup, and we had a lot of home games down the stretch."

UNLV moved into a third-place tie with San Diego State, which lost 82-68 at Brigham Young on Wednesday. The Rebels, who split with BYU, are in position to get the No. 3 seed in the MWC tournament by virtue of a tiebreaker.

The Horned Frogs (12-16, 4-9) were overwhelmed by UNLV’s defensive intensity and pressured into 21 turnovers. TCU committed seven turnovers in the first four minutes, and Wallace hit three 3-pointers to spark the Rebels to a 40-25 halftime lead.

"We got off to another pretty good start," Kruger said. "We forced a lot of turnovers and made a lot of opportunities offensively from those. The activity was good defensively, and I thought our full-court pressure was good."

Struggling to advance the ball past half-court much of the night, the Horned Frogs unraveled early in the second half. An errant TCU inbounds pass went straight to Willis, who coasted in for a layup.

Willis came right back and buried a 3-pointer to stretch UNLV’s lead to 58-33 with 14:45 left.

The Horned Frogs, who trailed by as many as 31 points, cut their deficit to 13 on Zvonko Buljan’s layup with 2:23 to go. But Massamba scored the next five points for the Rebels.

Ronnie Moss scored 25 points and Buljan had 21 and 11 rebounds for TCU.

UNLV shot 52.5 percent from the field and had 25 assists (seven by Bellfield) on 31 field goals.

"I like the energy we came out with and the focus. It looked like we wanted the game more," Willis said. "We definitely were ready to play. There’s no excuses. We told each other we’ve got to go out there and get it done."

While the Rebels were losing to New Mexico, San Diego State and Utah in mid-February, Willis and Stanback were suffering through minor shooting slumps at different times.

UNLV has seemed to rediscover its swagger now that its top two scorers are in sync on both ends of the floor.

"We’re starting to get our confidence back. We’re getting our identity back," Stanback said. "We’re playing hard defensively, and if we do that, we’ll be tough to beat."

Contact reporter Matt Youmans at myoumans@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2907.