Will UNLV be NIT bound?

UNLV has already lost to UNM and SDSU, although beating BYU. Their major issue is rebounding, they can't grab a board. They were outrebounded by both UNM and SDSU, and at critical times they gave the Lobos and Aztecs second and third chances. They have a tough road game coming up against Utah, they have already beat them in UNLV and Utah has always been a bad matchup for UNLV.


If the issue was shooting cold, missing layups, or just bad defense I wouldn't be so worried, because Kruger could work that out with his team. Their huge issue is rebounding, and that is very hard to fix mid-season, espicially with Derrick Jasper out, who was averaging 7 rebounds a game for the Rebels until he went out with a knee injury against Air Force. Rebounding is not something you can fix overnight. The issue with not being able to rebound, is that you can't get a stop when it is critical. Say you're down by 4, 3 minutes remaining, other team puts up a 3, no good, rebound, missed shot, another rebound, made shot. Now your probably down by 6 with about 2:15 remaining.

You can't have that happen to you and expect to win in college basketball. When they travel to Utah, who has always been a bad matchup for UNLV because of their size, and struggle with rebounding, they are going to have to shoot 65% for the game to win. That is almost impossible against Utah because of its size. If we give up second and third chances on defense, then we aren't going to get out into transition where we are at our best. Other teams that they will have to face down the road have size, but not very good guard play, if the guards can get a shot off, and give their big men a shot at the rebound, then UNLV will have a tough night all night. UNLV hasn't looked good with rebounding as of late and if that continues, we could see the same thing happen to UNLV that happened to them last season. Fade down the stretch and end up on the wrong side of the bubble at the end of the season.

On the optimistic side of the spectrum, we could win out from here and go deep in the MWC Tourney, at which point we'd be on the right side of the bubble. The only way I see that happenning is if Lon Kruger sprinkles some pixie dust on his big men and turn them all into Demarcus Cousins... What I'm saying is if unless Kruger is somehow able to get this team focused on rebounding again, or we get amazing guard play that allows us to squeak out some important wins in the MWC Tourney, we won't be heading to the tournament this year.

Think about it, if we lose to Utah and maybe Wyoming, who has some size, our RPI is going to go down dramatically. The tournament committee looks at RPI and SOS, our SOS is pretty good, but our RPI won't be anywhere close where we'll need it to be. Barring that we would beat 2 of the 3 top teams in the conference and win the conference championship, we'll be in real trouble.