Rebels take lead in sluggish first half

It was far from pretty, but UNLV goes to the locker room with a 20-19 lead against Air Force at the Thomas & Mack Center.

Wink Adams had seven points and three rebounds for the Rebels and Oscar Bellfield added four points.

It was an ugly half for UNLV, which committed six turnovers to vs. two assists and made only 7 of 22 shots from the field.

The numbers were even uglier from 3-point range where the Rebels made 2 of 11 attempts.

Air Force shot the exact same 7-for-22 from the field in the half. Andrew Henke had seven points and four rebounds for the Falcons and Trevor Noonan had five points.

Sustained Drought

UNLV went more than 11 minutes without a field goal in the first half.

After scoring the first two buckets of the game and jumping out to a 5-0 lead, the Rebels didn’t make another field goal until Wink Adams made an acrobatic layup to cut the Falcons’ lead to 13-9 with just over 7:30 to play in the first half.

The extended drought was a major reason the Rebels shooting percentage was so horrid.

Who’s the DJ?

At the second media timeout, the fans were struggling to get into the game.

Despite the fact that the scoreboard was imploring the sizable crowd to wave get loud, the fans were not buying into it.

Finally public address announcer Dick Calvert encouraged the fans to “get wild.”

Still, there was not much noise.

There were a few problems.

First of all, the Rebels were 2 of 10 from the floor and had not made a field goal in nearly seven minutes while allowing Air Force an 11-1 run.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the speakers were bumping out an “N’Sync” song.

It is not the kind of jam that ordinarily makes basketball fans stand up and cheer.

The only possible defense for whoever chose the song was that it was titled “Bye, Bye, Bye.” So it is possible the song was an attempted message to the departing seniors, but still, don’t ask the crowd to “get wild” to ’90s pop tunes.