Defense tightens up again, sparks UNLV to win over Cal
One stop.
That’s all UNLV would need Saturday at the Thomas & Mack Center to beat California. And with the game on the line, first-year basketball coach Kevin Kruger asked the Rebels to secure it.
By calling their own defensive scheme.
“He just said, ‘I ask you for a reason. Not just hypothetically. Like I already have an answer,’” senior point guard Jordan McCabe said. “We answered, and we said we wanted to stop them. Straight up. We played man and stuck to our principles. I think it’s what separates us. It’s our identity. It’s not anybody else’s.”
For the second time to start the season, the Rebels relied on their defense to secure a victory, this one 55-52 over the Golden Bears to preserve Kruger’s perfect record. They stayed sound during Cal’s final possession and forced senior wing Jordan Shepherd into a deep, errant 3-pointer in the final seconds.
Shepherd scored 27 points in the Golden Bears’ season opener, but finished 3 of 17 on Saturday en route to nine points as his team shot 36.8 percent.
“They couldn’t have executed defensively any better,” Kruger said. “We had about three actions we thought they might do. They guarded it absolutely perfectly.”
The Rebels have focused on developing their defensive chemistry and cohesion since practice began in September, knowing offense would be a little harder to come by with so many transfers needing to learn new terminology. They’ve been sound in their man-to-man principles and have held both opponents below 40 percent shooting.
Senior center Royce Hamm patrols the paint in their bigger lineups and rotated from the weak side to block a shot on Cal’s penultimate offensive possession. Junior wing Donovan Williams is long and aggressive enough to bang with bigs in smaller units.
Kruger mixed and matched lineups Saturday as he continues to learn his personnel, but a dogged defensive effort is practically a prerequisite for playing time. All 10 who played for UNLV (2-0) defend with a competitive fervor. The offense remains a work in progress and stagnated against the zone defenses that Cal (0-2) employed.
The Rebels settled far too often for 3-pointers and didn’t reverse the ball nearly enough. But they manufactured just enough offense, in part because of senior wing Bryce Hamilton and senior guard Mike Nuga, who scored 12 and 10 points.
Hamilton scored UNLV’s final five points, and the Rebels held the Golden Bears scoreless in the final two minutes.
“Every game we go into, we have a chip in our shoulder,” Nuga said. “We were picked, what were we picked, eighth? We wear UNLV on our chest with pride. We’re here to bring it back to what it once was.”
One stop at at time.
Contact reporter Sam Gordon at sgordon@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BySamGordon on Twitter.
