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The Nevada Wolf Pack enter their contest against Fresno State (9-10, 4-2 MW) on Saturday on a three-game losing streak and are facing the same issue that has haunted this team all season, poor shooting. The Wolf Pack had an eight-game losing streak earlier in the year and bad shooting directly led to those struggles.
In Nevada's 70-54 loss to Utah State on Tuesday, the Wolf Pack offense was abysmal only scoring 19 points in the first half and had another ugly shooting performance. Despite another brilliant performance from forward AJ West (18 points and nine rebounds), his running mates Marqueze Coleman, DJ Fenner and Michael Perez, went a combined 3 for 27 from the field including 2 for 18 from three point land scoring a whopping nine points between them.
It has gotten so dreadful now on offense that David Carter is now thinking about tweaking the starting lineup for this game to revitalize a terrible offense but my question is why wait this long to adjust the lineup when this team has struggled to score for most of the season? You would think an eight game losing streak during the non conference schedule would prompt a change in the lineup.
Nevertheless, Nevada faces a Fresno State team they played two weeks ago and in that game, Marvelle Harris torched the Wolf Pack for 40 points including five three pointers as the Pack fell to Fresno 69-66. Now the Bulldogs welcome back All Mountain West guard Cezar Guerrero after he missed 17 games due to academics and the Wolf Pack's job of containing the Bulldogs guards becomes much more difficult.
It is hard to call this game for Nevada a "must-win" so early into conference play against Fresno State, but the Wolf Pack cannot afford to drop this game and fall even further behind in the standings and for Nevada to win.
They must get better offensively in order to avoid a fourth straight defeat and from the looks of it Nevada is not giving up and are working hard to improve their shooting but now it is a matter of the shots going in.