UNLV women’s basketball preview: Looking to reach new heights

Cox Pavilion echoed with Lindy La Rocque’s voice as she spoke to the UNLV women’s basketball team in a post-practice huddle Friday.

“We gotta be more physical. We gotta impart our will,” she said. “We’re going to prepare for who we’re going to play and also get better ourselves.”

Those are the words of a fifth-year coach who has led her team to Mountain West dominance — and wants even more in the 2024-25 season.

She’s not alone. The Lady Rebels have won three straight conference championships, and they’re predicted to win another. But the team’s returners — especially senior forward Alyssa Brown and senior guard Kiara Jackson — are tired of landing NCAA Tournament bids without notching a win (also three straight).

The road to achieving deeper postseason success begins at 6:30 p.m. Monday at home against Loyola Marymount. The campaign will feature a more rigorous nonconference schedule than in previous seasons, including games against Baylor, Oklahoma and Arizona.

On Friday, La Rocque was already referencing the matchup against Arizona, which makes its debut in the Big 12 this season.

La Rocque told her players she knows they’ll come out and play aggressively against the Wildcats because they will probably be “bigger, faster and stronger” than them. She wants the Lady Rebels to take that approach to every game.

Part of the theme for the season is “adjusting and adapting,” La Rocque said.

No more Young

Two-time Mountain West Player of the Year Desi-Rae Young has graduated. She was vital as the Lady Rebels ran their offense through the paint, which La Rocque wants to continue this season.

“It’s going to be by committee and a collective effort,” she said of filling Young’s role.

If anyone in the Mountain West can take the diverse approach to interior scoring that La Rocque has in mind, it’s UNLV, which was the only team in the conference with multiple players on the preseason all-conference team (Brown, Jackson and sophomore Amarachi Kimpson).

“It obviously feels a little different. I’m sure it looks maybe a little bit different to people that watch us,” La Rocque said, “But we’ve got a great post group that are going to work really, really hard, and then our guards are going to kind of fill in some of those gaps, too.”

UNLV beat Point Loma 93-64 on Tuesday in the Lady Rebels’ sole preseason game, which saw six players score in double figures.

Afterward, La Rocque acknowledged the performances of redshirt freshman Meadow Roland and sophomore McKinna Brackens. Both forwards were notable in the paint. The 6-foot-2-inch Roland had an 11-point, 12-rebound double-double, while the 6-1 Brackens added five points and five rebounds.

Brown went 1-for-5 from the field for two points, but La Rocque emphasized that the team still benefited from her leadership and expects more on the court this season.

“She’s such a veteran player, she’s a brain out there for us,” La Rocque said. “That doesn’t always translate to the stat sheet.”

Brown noted afterward that it simply wasn’t her night, but she was excited to be a voice on the court and watch her teammates shine.

More for Kimpson

One of the breakout performances came from Kimpson, who became the first Lady Rebel to earn Mountain West Freshman and Sixth Player of the Year in the same year last season.

She tied Macie James to lead the team with 14 points Tuesday.

It’s a signal that Kimpson is ready to rise into her larger role after she was third on the team in scoring with 8.9 points per game last season.

“Over the summer, I was working on my shooting,” said Kimpson, who combined for a team-high 42 points in the 2023 conference tournament.

“I think it got better as I got into conference,” she said. “This year, of course, I just want to be consistent throughout, so that I can be more of a threat offensively, but also working on my defense.”

Contact Callie Fin at cfin@reviewjournal.com. Follow @CallieJLaw on X.