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Story by Alan Snel Photos by Hugh Byrne
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — After his team defeated UNLV by 12 points in the Mountain West basketball tournament, the Utah State basketball coach, Jerrod Calhoun, was astounded that more than 500 Aggie students traveled from Logan, Utah to Las Vegas to root on his squad.
He mentioned, in fact, he’d love for the Utah State students to get closer to the playing court at Thomas & Mack Center, the UNLV home arena that is used by the Mountain West Conference as the host venue for its league championship. The actual wooden court is a special court bought by the MWC and is not UNLV’s in an attempt by the conference to give Thomas & Mack a neutral feel.
After Utah State knocked out UNLV, 70-58, the Runnin’ Rebels coach, Kevin Kruger, thanked players like Jailen Bedford, Jaden Henley and Jalen Hill for logging so many minutes with two key players — Dedan Thomas Jr. and Julian Rihwain — both missing the MWC quarterfinal game with injuries. Bedford and Henley each played the maximum 40 minutes each, while Hill played 20 seconds shy of the entire game. Kruger talked about the “awesome” competitive fire of his players. Indeed, they played as hard as one could expect when playing full games.
But too bad Las Vegas did not come out to watch these players tonight.
Any observer could hear the massive cheers when Utah State scored buckets during the 8:30 PM game and much less noise when UNLV put points on the scoreboard. And yet the Utah State-UNLV game was here in Las Vegas.
It’s an oddity that Las Vegas gets so much attention as this new hot sports town with sellouts at NFL Raiders, NHL Golden Knights and WNBA Aces games but has more fans from a Utah State campus at a local hoops tourney in Las Vegas than from the local host city’s university. The Mountain West reported attendance as 5,510.
Attendance issues for UNLV games this season have been nothing new. The university’s sports marketing people and ticket staff have offered affordable ticket deals this year. But there was not the UNLV fan presence you would expect at a tournament game for a program that once had a national profile.
UNLV’s football team, which won a bowl game and finished ranked, did see an uptick in fans for home games at Allegiant Stadium last season.
In the end, UNLV missed just too many shots tonight.
It sounds simple, but the Runnin’ Rebels made a horribly low percentage of their shots. UNLV converted seven of 27 for 26 percent in the first half and six of 28 for a mere 21.4 percent in the second half. Put those halves together and UNLV made only 13 buckets out of 55 attempts. That’ a brutal 23.6 percent.
Utah State, the tourney’s number three seed, plays number two seed Colorado State in what should be a bruising MWC football game on basketball hardwood. In Friday’s other semifinal, top-seeded New Mexico plays Boise State.