LAS VEGAS – If you’re easily seduced by the color red, large and noisy crowds and a couple of entertaining and gifted college basketball teams, that the Thomas & Mack Center, on the UNLV campus, is the place to be mid-Saturday afternoon.
Unless you’re already in possession of a ticket, though, it’s probably wise not to invest the time and effort into showing up for the 3 o’clock tip-off for the Mountain West Conference Tournament championship game that will be played between the host Rebels and the regular-season New Mexico Lobos.
And I can’t imagine that anyone looking to offer large sums of cash in exchange for said ticket would find any takers.
On second thought, money being money and all . . . nah! I’d prefer continuing to believe that that being a part of the environment while watching what should prove to be one of the more dynamic and compelling games of the week would trump a thick wad of U.S. paper currency anytime.
In watching Coach Steve Alford’s Lobos in the flesh for this first time this season (in a quarterfinal with Wyoming Wednesday night and then in their 10-point decision over San Diego State Friday night), I’ve been much more impressed than I expected to be.
This is the best team Alford has coached since being hired by the Lobos in 2007 – discernibly better, I believe, than the squads that lost to Washington (2010) and Louisville (last spring) in the NCAA Tournament Round of 32.
The Lobos have the roster makeup, as well as “look”, of a high-quality Big Ten Conference team – which isn’t probably shouldn’t be odd, considering Alford’s background as a player (Indiana, which he helped lead to the 1987 national title under Bob Knight) and coach (Iowa).
Alford has a strong and reasonably skilled pair of starting posts in 7-foot, 250-pound (and counting) Alex Kirk – a resident of Los Alamos, NM, who benefited greatly by a redshirt 2011-12 season – and 6-9, 250-pound junior Cameron Bairstow, an important from Brisbane, Australia.
Angular (at 6-7 and a lean and very quick 200 or pounds) “3” – small forward – Tony Snell was a high school teammate Kawhi Leonard of the San Antonio Spurs.
He’ll join him in the Big Pay for Play League – aka, ‘”the NBA” – some day, especially if his jumper continues to look as sweet as it did Friday night, when he drops in five shots from behind the arc.
Six-four junior Kendall Williams (who is from Rancho Cucamonga in Southern California’s “Inland Empire”) – once “committed” to UCLA as a prep – is the 2013 MWC Player of the Year and is joined in the backcourt by another Aussie (from Hobart), Hugh Greenwood, who, at 6-3 and 205, is about as physically strong as guard as can be found in college.
Toss in much-better-than adequate depth via seniors Jamal Fenton and Chad Adams and this is a team that has evolved to the point where it will be capable of beating just about anyone it is matched against – especially if the Lobos are given a 3 or 4 seed by the NCAA on Sunday – during the first week of the NCAA tourney.
Of course, the Lobos may not encounter a more significant challenge next week that the one they will be faced with in the building where soon-to-be-Naismith Hall of Fame selection – hopefully – Jerry Tarkanian coached national championship contenders and winners (in 1990).
The Rebels handed the Lobos one of their just three conference losses in the T&M (by nine points) and it’s easy to under why while watching Coach Dave Rice’s club.
The Rebels can run hot and cold – often in the stretch of minutes – and struggled at times, both home and away, in large part undoubtedly because Rice had to integrate two freshmen and a couple of gifted transfers into his rotation.
Those freshmen, guard Katin Reinhardt (who had been mired in a jump shooting slump but hit four shots behind the arc in the first half) and 250-pound forward Anthony Bennett (he hit three 3s in a row in the first half), likely a Top 5 choice in the June NBA Draft, combined for 40 points during the 75-65 win over Colorado State that was tight until the very end.
But the team’s best – or, at least, “most consistently solid” – player is a senior, left-handed point guard Anthony Marshall.
It should be a heck of a matchup. There should be a whole lot of folks watching the game via the CBS broadcast – and wishing they could find a way into Thomas & Mack, instead.
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