Well, the folks at the Mountain West Conference don’t have to worry about UNLV fans storming the court at the Thomas & Mack Center on Saturday now.

That is, of course, unless it is after Kathy Olivier’s overachieving Lady Rebels win the women’s title.

But after a 71-57 MWC Tournament quarterfinal loss to San Diego State on Thursday afternoon, Lon Kruger’s  Runnin’ Rebels (21-10), who looked like a lock to make it to the NCAA Tournament for a third straight year, probably don’t have to worry about taking part in March Madness now.

The Runnin’ Rebels will gather on Sunday afternoon at the Cox Pavilion for their usual team banquet. But don’t look for many of them to stick around to watch the NCAA Selection Show on the big screen afterward. Not with the odds that this team is facing to get an at-large invitation the Big Dance.

“All we can do is hope for a miracle right now,” senior guard Rene Rougeau said when asked about his team’s NCAA chances. “We definitely had some quality wins. Without a doubt we for sure have had some tough losses.  … All we can do is just pray that we can get in.”

The Rebels do have some nice numbers to hang their hat on including a very glossy 4-1 record against Top 25 RPI teams (Louisville, Utah and BYU) and a 7-6 mark against Top 100 RPI teams.

Compare that to some of the schools that ESPN has been touting as bubble teams the last few weeks and the Rebels have a big edge in most cases. But UNLV plays in the Mountain West Conference, not the Big East or Big Ten, so those marks probably will likely be overlooked.

The numbers that are going to haunt the Rebels are 2-4 in their last six games, including back-to-back losses to fellow MWC bubble team San Diego State, and a disappointing fifth place finish in league play.

Obviously, this isn’t what people we’re expecting after won road games at eventual Big East champ Louisville and eventual Mountain West tri-champ BYU in a three-week span three months ago. But the Rebels countered that with lackluster road losses at Colorado State, TCU and Wyoming and were 0-3 against the Aztecs.

“Yeah, I thought we were just up and down all year,” Kruger said. “I don’t know that we ever had a stretch where we say week after week after week we consistently did things better. That’s obviously what you’re looking for every year. We didn’t.”

“At the end of the season you never want to say, ‘I wish I could have did this at the beginning of the season,’” guard Wink Adams said. “That’s what we’re doing now. We think we could have played harder in a lot of games that we lost. I mean, we’ve just been up and down and shaky.

“It’s really tough. Everybody wants to make the NCAA Tournament. But you just have got to wait and see what happens on Sunday.”

Kruger was asked by a reporter to make a case for his team to be picked for the NCAA Tournament.

“I’m not going to give any committee the reason to not select us, but I don’t know that we’ve done the things at this point that you’d sit there on Sunday expecting to be in,” Kruger said.

NIT anybody?

“Whatever happens, whether we do make it to the NCAA Tournament or the NIT, all we can do is just make the most of that basically,” Rougeau said. “It doesn’t matter where we go. We still can make a lot of noise regardless.”

UNLV’s NCAA Tournament hopes could be half-gone.

The Runnin’ Rebels trail San Diego State, 42-27, at halftime of today’s Mountain West Conference Tournament quarterfinal matchup at the Thomas & Mack Center in what most view as a must-win game for Lon Kruger’s squad if they hope to take part in March Madness for a third straight year.

The Aztecs are simply overpowering the smaller Rebels inside. San Diego State holds a huge 22-4 edge in points in the paint and has repeatedly carved the Rebels up with drives to the basket.

UNLV fans can be thankful that senior guard Wink Adams finally emerged from his late-season slump or it would be a whole lot worse. Adams, who scored just three points in a season-ending 57-46 loss at San Diego State last Saturday night, already has 17 points at intermission. However, no other Rebel has more than three points and all-MWC guard Rene Rougeau, who played just eight minutes because of foul problems, is scoreless.

Ryan Amoroso and Lorrenzo Wade each scored nine points to lead San Diego State which also nailed 6-of-11 3-point tries.

It looked like a good omen for UNLV Thursday when slumping Wink Adams hit a 19-footer to give the Rebels a quick 2-0 lead against San Diego State in their Mountain West Conference Tournament quarterfinal.

But San Diego State answered with an 8-0 streak and Rebel star Rene Rougeau went to the bench with two fouls at the 16:31 mark and the Aztecs are dominating early at the Thomas & Mack, 26-14, with 7:30 remaining.

Fourteen of San Diego State’s 26 points have come on layups as the bigger Aztecs have dominated the Rebels in the paint. Senior center Ryan Amoroso already has 9 points to lead San Diego State.

The 2:30 tipoff for today’s Mountain West Conference Tournament quarterfinal game with San Diego State won’t hurt UNLV’s home court advantage too much.

Of the 9,000 or so fans on hand, only about 500 are from San Diego State. Another 1,000 or so are wearing BYU blue and no doubt will be rooting for the Aztecs, a team the Cougars swept this season. UNLV, meanwhile, swept BYU during the regular season.

The rest of the crowd — about 7,500 or so — cheered loudly when the Rebels took the floor.

One lineup change for today’s game. Green Valley High product Billy White returns to the starting lineup for the Aztecs for the first time in four games after suffering hyper extending his knee in a game at New Mexico. White came off the bench against UNLV last Saturday at Cox Arena.

If you think Saturday night’s loss at San Diego State knocked UNLV off the NCAA Tournament bubble, think again.

ESPN Bracketologist Joe Lunardi, who usually comes within a team or two of predicting the NCAA Tournament’s field of 65 each year, still has Lon Kruger’s squad in his bracket that he released today.

In fact, Lunardi has four Mountain West teams in the tourney with a fifth — San Diego State — as his first team out.

Five MWC teams in the NCAA Tourney? Don’t count on it. But going by Lunardi’s calculations, that pretty much makes Thursday afternoon’s MWC Tourney quarterfinal rematch between the Rebels and Aztecs an NCAA Tourney elimination game.

Lunardi has both Utah and BYU comfortably in the tournament as No. 8 seeds while he has UNLV and New Mexico as No. 11 seeds. He has the Runnin’ Rebels playing Syracuse in Greensboro, N.C., as part of a Midwest Regional pod.

No doubt UNLV’s 56-55 upset of Big East champ Louisville still carries a lot of weight. Lunardi has Rick Pitino’s Cardinals as the No. 1 seed in the West Regional.

Lunardi’s last four teams in the tournament this week are New Mexico, South Carolina, Penn State and Arizona while San Diego State, Creighton, Florida and Miami are his first four teams out.

Of course, a lot of juggling can happen depending on how conference tournaments play out this week. But if the Rebels can at least get to the MWC Tourney finals, I’d like their chances to still go dancing for a third straight year. And they still might make it with just a win over the Aztecs on Thursday afternoon, especially if New Mexico should be upset by Wyoming later that night.

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.

SAN DIEGO — Assuming UNLV can win its quarterfinal rematch with San Diego State on Thursday afternoon at 2:30, and assuming BYU knocks off Air Force as expected tonight in Provo, tonight’s UNLV-San Diego State game here at Cox Arena will decide the No. 1 seed as well as the No. 4 seed for the MWC Tourney.

The winner of the Rebel-Aztec game will be the No. 4 seed and the home team Thursday. The loser is locked into the No. 5 seed.

But a lot of eyes in Utah will be focused on the outcome. If UNLV wins, Utah will get the No. 1 seed in the tourney by virtue of its regular-season split with the Rebels while BYU was swept by UNLV. If San Diego State wins tonight, BYU will be the No. 1 seed by virtue of its sweep of the Aztecs during the regular season while Utah split with the Aztecs.

Barring an upset, the No. 1 seed will play the 4-5 winner at 6 p.m. on Friday night.

So Rebel fans, would you rather have a semifinal game against Utah or BYU?

I’d say Utah because that would mean UNLV will have won tonight’s game and taken a step closer to an NCAA at-large bid. And I’d rather go into the tourney off a good road win than off a loss.

–

Injury Update: San Diego State’s Billy White, who has missed the past three games after hyper-extending his knee at New Mexico, warmed up with the Aztecs tonight. It will be interesting to see if he plays, though, because he still appeared to have trouble bending the knee during pre-game stretching.

SAN DIEGO — UNLV is really playing for nothing more than what color jersey and what locker room it gets to use for Thursday’s 2:30 p.m. Mountain West Tournament quarterfinal when it faces San Diego State here tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at Cox Arena.

Win or lose, Lon Kruger’s Rebels (21-8, 9-6) are locked in the 4 vs. 5 seed matchup with Steve Fisher’s Aztecs (20-8, 10-5). If UNLV wins, it will end up in a tie for fourth place with San Diego State in the final MWC standings but the Rebels would get the No. 4 seed … and the home uniforms … because they own the tiebreaker with the Aztecs by virtue of their regular season sweep of BYU.

BYU, Utah and New Mexico enter Saturday’s finales deadlocked at 11-4 at the top of the MWC standings and will likely end up in that order if all the home teams win tomorrow. New Mexico plays at Wyoming (18-11, 7-8) while BYU hosts winless Air Force (9-19, 0-15) and Utah plays slumping TCU (14-15, 5-10), which is just 3-9 on the road this season.

The bottom six teams are all locked into their slots for the tournament with the exception of UNLV and San Diego State who will play in the 4-5 game regardless. Wyoming is the No. 6 seed followed by TCU, Colorado State and Air Force.

So will be the No. 1, 2 and 3 seeds? Here are the scenarios.

BYU will get the No. 1 seed if it beats Air Force and San Diego State defeats UNLV at home. The Cougars would get the edge over Utah because they defeated the Aztecs twice during the regular season and seedings are based on who beat the higher-placed teams in the final standings.

However, if UNLV wins, it would be tied with the Aztecs but holds the tiebreak over the SDSU. Then Utah, if it defeats TCU, would be No. 1 because it beat UNLV once, while BYU was swept by the Rebels

Both the Utes and Cougars have the edge over New Mexico in any tiebreakers — BYU on the basis of its sweep of San Diego State and Utah on the basis of a higher RPI ranking, the next criteria when two teams have identical records of which teams they defeated.

If BYU, Utah and New Mexico all lose and San Diego State wins to create a four-way tie at 11-5, San Diego State would be the odd team out because of its two losses to BYU, which would be No. 1.

Wink Adams has made a lot of big baskets during his four-year UNLV career, but considering what was at stake on Senior Night on Wednesday at the Thomas & Mack Center few were any bigger than this one.

The Runnin’ Rebels (21-8, 9-6), playing perhaps their ugliest game of the Lon Kruger Era, were nursing just a two-point lead over lowly Air Force (9-19, 0-15) when Adams drove through heavy traffic and banked in a difficult left-handed layup with 24.6 seconds left to up the lead to a much more comfortable 45-41.

That would prove to be the game-winning basket in a 46-43 victory over a Falcons squad that has now lost 16 straight games.

How devastating would a home loss to Air Force have been on Wednesday night? Huge, unless you are a big fan of the NIT.

Home losses to a team like Air Force are bad on any NCAA Tournament resume but this one would have wiped out all the good gained by the Rebels’ New Year’s Eve upset of Louisville or its regular season sweep of BYU.

The 46 points were the fewest scored in a UNLV victory since 1962 when the Rebels edged mighty Grand Canyon College, 43-42.

“Obviously a struggle all night long,” Kruger said in perhaps the night’s biggest understatement.

UNLV matched its season low for first half points (20 at Nevada) and assists (6 at Wyoming). They went 11 minutes between baskets during one first half stretch and seven minutes without a point late in the second half.

But thanks to some tough defense, the Rebels found a way to avoid a disastrous loss to the Falcons.

It was only fitting that Adams, who finished with a team-high 11 points, made the game-winner with his clutch drive.

“Wink made a big play,” Kruger said. “Sure did. It’s something he’s done a lot during his career. He drove it, was aggressive and got the layup to go that put us back up by four at a critical time.”

“That was a tremendous shot,” senior guard Rene Rougeau added. “It was probably the biggest basket of the night. … He’s really stepping his game up and thats what we really needed. I was just so happy to see him make that basket.”

Adams compared the drive to his game-winner in last year’s 89-88 Mountain West Conference Tournament quarterfinal win over TCU. The difference was Adams used his right hand to finish a floater against the Horned Frogs.

“It was kind of the same situation as the TCU game,” Adams said. “I got the ball with a couple seconds left and I just told myself I was going to try and get to the basket and draw a foul and hit a layup. … I’m glad it went in when it did.”

He wasn’t the only one in the crowd of 14,943.

Rougeau was asked if he thought the Rebels had dodged a bullet.

“Without a doubt,” he said.

Whew!

UNLV’s expected Senior Night romp over Air Force turned into a nail-biter. An ugly 46-43 nail-biter.

The cold-shooting Rebels appeared to have the game comfortably in hand, leading 41-29 with 8:16 to go.

But Air Force outscored the Rebels, 10-0, over the next seven minutes to cut it to two points, 41-39, with 1:48 remaining.

It wasn’t until Wink Adams drove and put in a tough left-handed layup with 24.6 that upped UNLV’s lead to four points, 45-41, that anxious Rebel fans could relax a little.

Falcon forward Matt Holland then missed two 3-pointers and Joe Darger hit the front end of  a one-and-one to give UNLV a 46-41 lead with 8.8 seconds left.

Holland drove for a dunk with 0.7 seconds left to cut it back to three points, 46-43. Rene Rougeau then inbounded the ball to Oscar Bellfield who dribbled the clock out.

Adams had 11 points and 5 rebounds to lead the Rebels.

Joe Darger nailed a pair of 3-pointers to highlight a 14-4 spurt by UNLV to start the second half and UNLV, which trailed by as many as eight points late in the first half, leads Air Force, 41-29, with 7:41 to go at the Thomas & Mack Center.

Counting a 9-0 streak that ended the first half, UNLV outscored the Falcons, 23-4, over a 13-minute span.

Wink Adams has nine points and Darger has eight to lead the Rebels.

It doesn’t get much uglier than this.

Over 11 1/2 minutes between field goals. Nine points in the first 12 1/2 minutes. Yet the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels, despite matching their season first low for points (at Nevada on Dec. 6), actually lead the Air Force Falcons, 20-19, at halftime at the Thomas & Mack Center on Wednesday night.

That should tell you just how bad Air Force (9-18, 0-14), losers of 15 straight games, are this season.

The Runnin’ Rebels used a 9-0 spurt in the final 4:06 to take a 20-19 halftime lead.

Joe Darger’s one-and-one with 49.9 seconds left in the half gave UNLV, which trailed by as many as eight points (19-11), the lead at intermission.

Both teams shot an identical 7-of-22 from the floor (31.8 percent). UNLV made just 2-of-11 3-pointers (18.2 percent) and was even out-rebounded by Air Force, 17-15.

Wink Adams leads the Rebels with 7 points (3-of-5 from the floor) and senior Mo Rutledge already has 4 steals.

The week off obviously didn’t help UNLV’s sputtering offense.

The Rebels went over 11 minutes between baskets and trail the Air Force Falcons, 19-15 with 3:54 to go in the first half tonight at the Thomas & Mack Center.

UNLV made just 2 of its first 12 field goal tries. Guard Wink Adams (7 points) is the only Rebel so far to shoot decently.

UNLV head coach Lon Kruger shunned the idea of starting all five seniors on Senior Night but he didn’t waste any time making sure all five saw some game action.

The big three of Wink Adams, Rene Rougeau and Joe Darger started as usual and sixth man Mo Rutledge was the first sub in two minutes later. And seldom-used walk-on Rob Ketchum entered the game at the 16:02 mark and attempted a mid-range jumper that missed.

The strategy to get all five seniors in the game early may have backfired, however. UNLV led 6-3 when Ketchum  came into the game but Air Force then went on an 8-0 run to take a 11-6 lead with 11:52 remaining.

If you plan on attending tonight’s 7 p.m. Senior White Out Night game against Air Force, I’d suggest you leave early for the Thomas & Mack Center.

Traffic and parking have been a big problem for recent home weeknight games because of the overlap of student parking for night classes. Only about 4,000 of the announced 12,178 for the Rebels last weeknight game against TCU on Feb. 10 were in their seats when the fireworks went off during pre-game introductions.

And don’t forget that the special Senior Night ceremonies begin at 6:45 which is another good reason to get to the T&M early tonight.