It wasn’t fairly, however the UNLV males’s basketball group pulled out a win over San Jose State on Tuesday at Provident Credit score Union Occasion Middle in San Jose, California.
The 77-71 victory was the Rebels’ second sport with out main scorer Dedan Thomas Jr., whereas the Spartans have been down three starters.
Thomas is out with a shoulder harm. San Jose State heart Rob Vaihola and guard Will McClendon have been each dominated out with knee accidents earlier than the matchup, and beginning guard Donavan Yap Jr. exited the sport with an obvious lower-body harm on the 4:37 mark of the primary half. He ultimately returned to the sideline on crutches.
“You simply had two evenly matched groups within the conditions provided that simply battled like loopy and tried to attempt to win a sport nevertheless they might,” Rebels coach Kevin Kruger stated in his postgame radio look. “And we have been simply lucky to return out on prime.”
Jaden Henley led UNLV (15-13, 9-8 Mountain West) with a career-high 22 factors.
Josh Uduje had 27 factors for San Jose State (13-17, 6-12), which made a late comeback push.
Shut one
UNLV had 14 turnovers within the sport, which noticed 9 lead adjustments.
The Rebels had a 35-31 lead at halftime and had a possibility to shut out the victory with out difficulty, as they led by six with 1:20 left to play.
However after UNLV allowed Latrell Davis to make a clutch 3-pointer, Sadaidriene Corridor stole the ball from Jailen Bedford. Julian Rishwain fouled Uduje on the quick break, however the guard gave UNLV a break by lacking one in every of his makes an attempt on the line to maintain the Rebels up 71-69 with 19 seconds to go.
With Kruger calling two timeouts in that remaining stretch, the Rebels have been in a position to end the sport on the free-throw line.
“We simply ready and took these timeouts, as a result of these are conditions that (they) as a gaggle have been in, with the 5 on the ground, they usually did it fairly nicely,” Kruger stated. “We discovered, as a result of we got here out of 1 timeout and did just about the precise reverse of what we have been hoping to do.”
Bouncing again
The victory marked a profitable bounce-back sport for Henley, who solely had one level and three field-goal makes an attempt within the Rebels’ final outing, a 61-53 loss to Colorado State on Saturday.
But it surely wasn’t simply Henley who noticed an improved efficiency. There have been 4 different Rebels who scored in double figures. Jalen Hill added 17 factors, Jeremiah “Bear” Cherry scored 14, Rishwain scored 11, and Bedford had 13 off the bench.
“Tonight was significantly better, and it nonetheless was removed from excellent,” Kruger stated. “We nonetheless bought drained. We nonetheless made some choices that have been extraordinarily head-scratching, however the proportion of performs we made that have been actually what we have been in search of (and) the place we wished to get the ball in order that that particular person might make a play or create a bonus, was significantly better than it was within the Colorado State sport.”
The Rebels have been 76 p.c from the free throw line (16-for-21), an enchancment from 7-for-17 towards Colorado State, which Kruger credited to not bringing an excessive amount of consideration to the earlier capturing struggles.
“It was nothing apart from just a bit little bit of a psychological block,” he stated. “You need to be free, calm and relaxed in these conditions. And we’ve good shooters.”
Kruger famous {that a} key adjustment was giving Hill extra ball-handling duties to take some strain off Henley as he adjusts to the brand new position.
“Once you lose a man like (Thomas) with 5 video games left, there’s going to be quite a lot of imperfections, after which there’s not quite a lot of alternatives for these stay reps,” Kruger stated of the offensive sport plan. “So we’ve simply bought to interrupt it down much more.”
Contact Callie Fin at cfin@reviewjournal.com. Observe @CallieJLaw on X.
