A long time coming

UNLV’s senior class has seen a great deal of success over the course of four years in the program.

However, one thing the group had not done was win a game against Brigham Young at the Marriott Center in Provo, Utah.

That all changed Wednesday night as the Rebels earned a 76-70 victory over the Cougars.

“I never won here. A lot of teams don’t win here,” senior guard Wink Adams said. “Since I’ve been in college, I haven’t seen a lot of teams walk out of here with a victory. For us to be one, it’s an amazing feeling. I can’t even explain it right now.”

Adams was a big reason UNLV got the victory.

He scored 22 points, including 14 in the second half. Adams hit 8 of 10 from the free-throw line and hit an off-balance jumper late in the shot clock to extend the Rebels’ lead to six with just over 2:00 remaining.

The real damage was done early in the second half. After building a 43-30 lead at the break, BYU made only one of its first 17 shots in the second half.

The Cougars second successful field goal did not occur until there was just 5:44 remaining in the contest. It capped a stretch of more than 11 minutes without a field goal by BYU.

During that time span, the Rebels outscored BYU 28-7 to turn a 13-point deficit into a 58-50 advantage.

Late in the game, the Cougars got within three points on several occasions. Lee Cummard, the co-Mountain West Conference preseason player of the year with Adams, made a huge mental mistake.

Before UNLV inbounded the ball following a Lamont Morgan Jr. basket with 21 seconds remaining, Cummard reached across the end line and slapped the ball out of the hands of Rene Rougeau.

The resulting technical foul essentially clinched the game for the Rebels.

Tre’Von Willis finished with 13 points for UNLV, but nine came in the first half with the Rebels struggling to find any kind of offense. Darris Santee had 11 points for UNLV and Adams added eight rebounds.

Jonathan Tavernari had 21 points and 13 rebounds to lead the Cougars, but he hit just 7 of 22 shots in the game. Jimmer Fredette had 19 points, but also struggled to a 6-for-15 shooting performance.

Cummard was held to his second straight sub-par game, scoring 10 points and pulling down just two rebounds.

As a team, BYU shot just 25 percent from the field in the second half.

The win by UNLV snapped BYU’s 25-game conference home winning streak. The Rebels were the last Mountain West Conference team to win in the Marriott Center on March 5, 2005.

PLAY OF THE GAME? — Wink Adams directed a tirade at an official after he was called for traveling under the basket with 3:29 to play.

The referee placed the whistle in his mouth and looked as if he would call Adams for a crucial technical foul.

Tre’Von Willis stepped in between and pleaded for official not to blow the whistle as Adams walked away.

Amazingly, the referee complied and offered Adams just a warning.

“I’ve got to keep my head. Tre’Von and Rene came up to me and told me to just cool down and get some stops on defense (because) that’s what wins games,” Adams said. “It definitely calmed me down. I got back on defense and I forgot about the play and we just kept playing.”

A technical foul in that situation would have given the Cougars a chance to get within three points with possession of the ball.

FIRMLY PLANTED — Midway through the second half, Brice Massamba was whistled for his second moving screen foul of the game.

He was not about to let it happen again.

Massamba came to a stop and set his feet emphatically on his next few screens.

“Coach told me to do that because the first one I got wasn’t even a moving screen,” Massamba said. “The ref just told me you can’t screen someone in the back if they can’t see you. That’s some bull. I listened to coach and he told me to set my feet down so they cannot call it.”

Less than a minute after his second violation, he set a flawless pick for Bellfield, who dropped the ball to a rolling Massamba for a layup.

LOST LUSTER? — Brice Massamba was playing in his first game in Provo, but he was not intimidated by the atmosphere.

“The fans were great. It was loud and everything, but it’s the same way everywhere we play,” Massamba said. “It was nothing special to me.”

Easy for him to say. He’s never lost in the Marriott Center.

Speaking of the crowd, the announced attendance of 12,853 fell about 10,000 short of a sellout. In addition, fans started leaving well before the outcome of the game was decided.

It was a very disappointing effort by the Cougar faithful.

In fairness, the student section was amazing.

REUNION — There are two members of the Rebels’ national championship team in the building tonight and neither of them is working with UNLV in any capacity.

Greg Anthony is doing the color commentary on the television broadcast for CBS College Sports.

Over on the BYU sideline, Dave Rice is an assistant coach.

OOPS — A slight correction to the earlier blog posting that proposed BYU and UNLV stop playing each other in the regular season because of the home team’s dominance in the series.

Everybody’s wrong sometime.