UNLV basketball earns important win against Utah State

This was a different kind of temperature gauge.

Instead of having a thermometer pointed at its collective heads as one way to measure for COVID-19, UNLV’s basketball team Monday night was tested for its Mountain West mettle.

For those 40 minutes, it passed.

Like, by the shoelace of a hightop.

The Rebels opened a two-game series with second-place Utah State by beating the Aggies 59-56 at Thomas & Mack Center, a game hardly known for aesthetics and yet one UNLV needed for all sorts of reasons.

Game 2 between the teams is here Wednesday. You have to think more shots will be made.

Best win yet

Monday was still by far the best win in a strange season for the Rebels. Before this, only a victory against a (really) bad Kansas State side told us much of anything about T. J. Otzelberger’s second UNLV team.

We’ve now seen them against what has been one of the league’s better rosters. Any sort of success matters. No matter how you get there. It’s a huge victory.

“Our guys should feel good about (it),” Otzelberger said. “But they should also understand that as we’re picking up momentum, the (series finale) on Wednesday is really big. We have to have a lot of focus — we’re going to have to bring our ‘A’ game.”

Neither side had theirs Monday. It wasn’t the second game against New Mexico ugly, but it was in the neighborhood those final 20 minutes. Utah State went a 12-minute stretch without a basket. At one point, it missed 18 of 19 shots.

UNLV was outscored 22-20 in the second half and nearly perfected a way on how to lose a game after leading by nine with 1:17 remaining. But the Rebels didn’t. They held on.

This is what we saw last year, the Rebels (6-6, 3-2) holding Utah State (12-5, 9-2) to a disastrous offensive night and coming away with a win.

Maybe it should be expected when these two tip off. Otzelberger and Utah State coach Craig Smith know each other well, having overlapped for two seasons against each other in the Summit League before now existing in the Mountain West. Maybe there’s a reason this matchup recently has been more grind-it-out than things of beauty.

This was certain: UNLV had to shoot well from 3-point range to stand a chance. The Rebels weren’t going to do much of anything inside (do they ever?) against the league’s best defender — Utah State center Neemias Queta (eight points, 11 rebounds, six blocks). So it was all kinds of significant that UNLV made 8-of-16 on 3s in the first half and 13-of-30 for the game.

His numbers won’t garner headlines, but UNLV forward Mbacke Diong continues to outplay the level most had probably settled on for the senior. He finished with four points, 11 rebounds, four steals and two blocks in 33 minutes. On a night UNLV limited Utah State to 32.8 percent shooting and 22.7 percent on 3s — yeah, there were a whole lot of open jumpers missed by the Aggies — Diong more than held his own against Queta.

Finishing things off

It almost slipped away at the end. Sometimes, you just need to learn how to win. How to put a good team away down the stretch. It’s not as if UNLV has known such a situation often.

“That was stressful for sure,” said sophomore forward Moses Wood, who had 10 points and six rebounds in his first start of the season. “We had a couple mistakes there, but at the end of the day, we pulled out the W.

“We’re on a roll now, man. That’s five (straight wins). We’re hot. I feel really good about Wednesday and the rest of the season. I think we’re one of the most dangerous teams right now in the Mountain West.”

Huge win, this. Temperature gauge.

Ed Graney is a Sigma Delta Chi Award winner for sports column writing and can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard on “The Press Box,” ESPN Radio 100.9 FM and 1100 AM, from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday. Follow @edgraney on Twitter.