Whatever happened to the UNLV team that won at Louisville and BYU?

SAN DIEGO — While once again watching UNLV struggle to hit the 46-point mark for the second straight game  in Saturday night’s 57-46 loss to San Diego State, I couldn’t help but think: “Whatever happened to the Rebels team that won at Louisville and BYU earlier this year?”

While Rick Pitino’s Cardinals won an outright Big East title and Dave Rose’s Cougars celebrated a share of the Mountain West championship on Saturday night, Lon Kruger’s Rebels boarded a bus for a long five-hour trip home to Las Vegas with fifth place all wrapped up in the Mountain West Conference.

That’s right, fifth place. This for a team that was the consensus preseason choice to win the Mountain West Conference championship.

Instead, UNLV (21-9, 9-7),  which looked like a lock for an NCAA Tournament berth two weeks ago, limps into the Mountain West Tournament having lost five of its last nine games including both contests against quarterfinal opponent San Diego State (21-8, 11-5).

“Who knows man?” senior forward Rene Rougeau said asked where the UNLV team that defeated Louisville and BYU has gone. “We’ve just got to get better basically. The conference tournament is coming up. That’s all that we can worry about right now.”

Ah, the MWC Tournament. UNLV has won it the last two years at the Thomas & Mack and that has always been the team’s ace in the hole while it’s struggled to the finish line. But unless the Rebels can start hitting some shots with regularity, they won’t be around long enough to make it three in a row.

In its last five games, UNLV has shot 33.3, 30.0, 34.5, 44.4 and 35.5 percent from the floor. Ouch

“We’ve been inconsistent shooting the ball all year,” Kruger said. “Sometimes you just can’t afford to do that. This time of year you have to make plays.”

The Rebels played good enough defense again to win here, compiling 12 steals and forcing 20 turnovers while holding the Aztecs to just 35.5 percent (15-of-42) shooting. But UNLV’s offense once again was plain painful to watch as the Rebels shot just 33.3 percent (15-of-45) from the floor including 3-of-17 (17.6 percent) from 3-point range.

“I think I missed way too many shots tonight myself,” Rougeau, who was actually a respectable 5-of-11 from the floor en route to 12 points, said. “I have to really focus and lock in there. You’ll definitely see a better Rene Rougeau next time.”

UNLV fans can only hope they’ll see a much better Wink Adams on Thursday afternoon at 2:30.

Adams, the preseason conference co-player of the year, was pretty much invisible once again on the offensive end scoring just three points on 1-of-9 shooting. He didn’t score a point until 7:03 remained in the game on a free throw.

Adams has scored a total of 23 points in UNLV’s last three games, an average of just 7.8 points per game.

“They did a good job on me,” Adams said. “I didn’t really get a good look.

“We’re playing defense pretty good,” Adams continued. “That’s always a good thing. … If we shoot the ball well, play defense and get rebounds, we’ll be okay.”

Some mighty big “ifs” judging by recent performances.

“Everyone’s zero-zero now,” senior forward Joe Darger added. “We’ve got to go out and look at game film and the things we didn’t do very good in this game and get better.”

“Anything can happen in the conference tournament,” Rougeau said. “We’ve just got to keep our heads up.”

And hit a few more shots. Make that a lot more shots.