Lady Rebels dethroned in Mountain West semis; NCAA bid in doubt — PHOTOS
Lindy La Rocque found herself in uncharted territory Tuesday at a media dais set up on a practice court at the Thomas &Mack Center.
The fifth-year UNLV women’s basketball coach had to eulogize an unsuccessful Mountain West tournament run for the first time in three seasons. She had to find the words to describe a stunning 71-59 loss to San Diego State in the semifinals.
Although the top-seeded Lady Rebels (25-7) cut a 21-point deficit in the third quarter down to seven with two minutes to play, they simply couldn’t get shots to fall. UNLV shot 27.7 percent from the field (18-for-65) while the No. 4 Aztecs (24-9) shot 45.5 percent (25-for-55).
After earning three straight automatic berths to the NCAA Tournament for winning the conference tournament, the Lady Rebels will now wait to see if the selection committee awards them at at-large bid Sunday. San Diego State will play No. 2 Wyoming for the Mountain West’s automatic bid in the final at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.
“I don’t honestly have a ton of words because we haven’t done this much, which is a good thing. In the locker room with the team, here with you, I haven’t been here before,” La Rocque said. “When you’re at the top and you get knocked off, the fall is long and hard, and it hurts.”
Next to her, seniors Kiara Jackson and Alyssa Brown illustrated that pain. UNLV’s last Mountain West tournament loss was 72-56 to Wyoming in the 2021 quarterfinals, a season before they joined the program.
Brown and Jackson were the Lady Rebels’ leading scorers for UNLV on Tuesday with 15 and 14 points, respectively.
Their faces were puffy from crying, and those tears would soon return once they were asked about what it meant to win three straight conference championships.
“I just stopped crying,” Brown lamented. “(It meant) everything, honestly. The love I have for the program and Lindy, for the staff — there’s no words for it. I’ve had a great time at UNLV.”
“It means a lot,” Jackson said through sobs. “Even though we lost tonight, we definitely made our legacy in this league.”
Veronica Sheffey scored 15 points and Naomi Panganiban added 14 for San Diego State.
No fatigue
The Lady Rebels ended the first quarter with a 10-9 lead, but the cracks were showing even then as they went on a 2:47 field-goal drought to end the period.
The Aztecs ended the second quarter on a 15-3 run to take a 33-20 lead at halftime. And while UNLV showed flashes in the second half, like a driving three-point play from Amarachi Kimpson to open the third quarter, it wasn’t enough.
San Diego State lost to UNLV in last year’s conference championship game. San Diego State coach Stacie Terry-Hutson said she and the team also took note of the fact that they were nearly counted out by ESPN, which gave the Lady Rebels a 91.3 percent win probability entering the game, despite the teams splitting their two regular-season meetings.
“So we just took that personal,” Terry-Hutson said. “We had a game plan and we executed it.”
La Rocque said the Lady Rebels approached the Aztecs like they would anyone else, but simply hurt themselves and got “a little impatient” offensively.
“You tell me we hold them to 33 at halftime, I’m thinking ‘All right, cool, we’re in the game — not knowing we’d only score 20,” she said. “I think we were a little self-inflicting at times, too. When they went on some runs, we were maybe trying to get, like, the 20-point shot when that doesn’t exist.”
A question about the potential fatigue caused by four seasons of mostly uninterrupted greatness brought a passionate answer out of La Rocque.
“No, I don’t feel fatigued. I don’t think they feel fatigued. I think it’s a lot of pressure for these young people,” she said. “These two seniors won three championships, and they would give anything to win another one. But just the target that that creates, the pressure, subconsciously even that that builds … that’s a lot for young people.
“And if anything, that’s what I felt. I mean doing something — we were going for a f——— four-peat, are you kidding me? And we didn’t get it done.”
After the expletive, La Rocque apologized to athletic director Erick Harper, who sat in the last row of media seats.
Not over yet
La Rocque ended her answer about fatigue by emphasizing that the Lady Rebels aren’t done yet.
“We are playing in postseason. I couldn’t tell you what tournament. But we are playing. Whichever one we get in, we expect to win, and we’re going to play our butt off,” she said.
Although La Rocque isn’t confident the selection committee will act in UNLV’s favor, she made her best case.
“I think that we deserve it. Plain and simple,” she said. “Statistically, metrics, whatever you want to say — wins, losses — I think it all matters. I think you have to look at a full body of work. … I think at this point we’ve been there three times. We also deserve the benefit of the doubt, frankly. We’ve established some credibility that we should be able to rely on in this situation.”
When asked if UNLV should still have a spot in the NCAA tournament despite the loss, Terry-Hutson agreed.
“The Mountain West is a good league. There’s a lot of teams in here that deserve some recognition,” she said. “UNLV deserves to be in the NCAA Tournament. … They’ve gone out and played some really tough teams. They beat some good teams. They dominated this league.”
Contact Callie Fin at cfin@reviewjournal.com. Follow @CallieJLaw on X.
