Pastner, Rebels show what’s possible in OT win over Nevada

LAS VEGAS — Suffice to say, this isn’t what Josh Pastner had in mind when he returned to the sidelines from the television studio.

Pastner’s first year as UNLV’s coach can be summed up in a single word — inconsistent. The Runnin’ Rebels will go through long periods of sleepwalking before waking up and realizing it’s time to play and get going.

It has resulted in a mediocre season, a sea of empty seats inside the Thomas & Mack Center and yet another year of needing to win four games in as many days in the upcoming Mountain West tournament if it hopes to play in the NCAA Tournament, a place UNLV last visited back in 2013 when Dave Rice was the coach.

Saturday, however, his team showed what is possible when it does enough things right. And it reinforced his decision to leave TV and get back into coaching.

The Rebels took Nevada to overtime and with Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn leading the way with a career performance scoring 42 points, wound up getting rewarded with an 85-83 victory. UNLV is 3-0 in OT this season.

“What a win,” Pastner said. “Defensively, our guys executed the game plan. We got it done. Our defense allowed us to get our offense going.”

Gibbs-Lawhorn said of the win which got UNLV to 15-14 overall and 9-9 in Mountain West play: “We fought. We had a complete focus and held each other accountable.”

The lack of a true point guard to not only run the offense but to spearhead the defense, has been one of the challenges for Pastner. He thought he had that addressed when he brought Myles Che, a talented player who starred at UC Irvine to UNLV only to have Che break his foot prior to the start of the season, then re-injure himself trying to get back on the floor.

It resulted in Gibbs-Lawhorn, a shooting guard who had transferred from Illinois, having to play the point. It’s a hard transition for any player to make and in DGL’s case, he has done the best he could. He and Howie Fleming have tried to serve as distributors to the others and Gibbs-Lawhorn’s…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/pastner-rebels-show-whats-possible-065508641.html

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Publish date : 2026-03-01 06:55:00

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