It’s still the middle of February, but the UNLV basketball team wasn’t thinking about Valentine’s Day when they traveled to Fresno State for a key Mountain West matchup Wednesday.
No, with the conference race heating up, the Scarlet and Gray are turning their internal calendar to March — and challenging themselves to play like it.
According to junior forward Rob Whaley, the players have adopted an unofficial rallying cry of being a team that can win in March. And on Wednesday that attitude paid off, as UNLV did whatever it took to escape with a 67-65 win at Fresno State.
It was about as “survive and advance” as a game can be, as an inferior Fresno State squad simply refused to die. But when the final buzzer sounded, UNLV had powered through to clinch its fifth straight win. Kevin Kruger’s crew is now alone in fourth place in the MWC standings, just one game out of first in the loss column.
Outside a boisterous UNLV locker room, Kruger’s postgame press conference was interrupted by several players who stopped by to whoop it up with their coach.
Kruger wants his players to enjoy the victories as they continue to stack up.
“Right now we’ve got a happy locker room and a happy group of guys,” Kruger said. “They know how hard it is to win on the road, so getting another road win in this conference is huge.”
Whaley scored a team-high 17 points, dominating a thin Fresno State frontcourt to the tune of 6-of-7 from the field and 5-of-7 from the free-throw line. Senior center Kalib Boone also feasted inside, scoring 15 points on 6-of-9 shooting.
With the interior players scoring at will, UNLV shot 54.5% as a team and 66.7% in the second half. Despite that level of efficiency, they couldn’t shake Fresno State. The Bulldogs stayed within a couple possessions for most of the night, and in the final minute they trimmed UNLV’s lead to a single point.
Whaley made 1-of-2 from the line to extend UNLV’s advantage to 67-65 with 53 seconds left. UNLV played stifling defense on the ensuing possession, and Leo Colimerio’s desperation 3-point attempt missed the rim entirely as the shot clock sounded.
UNLV gave Fresno additional life by committing a turnover in the backcourt, and once again the Bulldogs went for the win, as guard Xavier DuSell launched a 3 from the corner as time ran out.
It was eerily similar to a last-second 3-pointer that DuSell, then at Wyoming, attempted and made to knock UNLV out of the Mountain West tournament in 2022 — a fact that wasn’t lost on Kruger as he watched the ball leave DuSell’s hand.
“Shades of Wyoming from two years ago when he hit the 3 in the conference tournament that felt like it bounced off the rafters, it was up in the air forever,” Kruger said.
This time, fortune was on UNLV’s side and the shot was way off line.
“We did a great job getting a hand up,” Kruger said. “Maybe this is balancing it out for that 3 a couple years ago.”
Colimerio finished with a game-high 30 points and DuSell added 14, but UNLV found a way to win anyway.
Whaley said the players committed to playing team ball after a lackluster first half saw the team record just one assist on 12 made baskets.
“We finally woke up,” Whaley said. “We came out kind of sluggish, but we got together as a team at halftime and said we need to come out ready to win this. Our saying right now is, ‘Are we a team in March?’ We believe we’re a team in March. So that’s our saying, that’s what got us going.”
Freshman point guard D.J. Thomas scored 11 points on 4-of-8 shooting, and perhaps most importantly, he made UNLV’s lone 3-pointer on the night. The team went 1-of-8 from deep, but UNLV’s nation-best streak of consecutive games with a 3-pointer was extended to 1,216 by virtue of Thomas’ triple early in the second half.
Now, UNLV will return home to host UNR on Saturday. Kruger has never lost to the in-state rival, running up a perfect 4-0 record over the last two years.
If the Scarlet and Gray continue to play with a March mentality, they like their chances of extending another streak — their conference-best five-game winning streak.
“Guys battled and fought like crazy,” Kruger said. “There was a couple of times we could have hung our head, but our guys didn’t. So we’ll enjoy this, we’ll enjoy the flight back, then we’ll wake up and get ready for Reno.”
Mike Grimala can be reached at 702-948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Mike on Twitter at twitter.com/mikegrimala.
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