Lady Rebels rebound to take down Vandals
WAILUKU — The University of Nevada-Las Vegas women’s basketball team suffered its first loss of the season Friday night.
On Saturday, the Lady Rebels responded just as their coach hoped.
UNLV defeated Idaho 73-61 on the second and final day of the Maui Jim Maui Classic in front of about 500 fans at War Memorial Gym.
“Big difference, I thought this was a huge game for the Lady Rebels,” UNLV coach Kathy Olivier said. “For us, we didn’t want to come home empty-handed.”
The Lady Rebels (6-1) were coming off a 63-54 loss to Brigham Young.
“I thought we had some really good rebounds, I thought our team did a really good job against their zone,” Olivier said. “Last night we couldn’t do anything against BYU’s zone. We had the wrong tempo. Today we settled down, we ran our stuff, believed in our offense and hit some big 3s and got the ball inside — that’s what you have to do against a zone.”
Idaho took a 45-41 lead with 6 minutes, 49 seconds left in the third quarter after hitting four of five 3-point attempts to open the second half. Idaho was 12-for-26 on 3s midway through the third quarter, but finished 16-for-43. The Vandals shot only nine times inside the arc.
“Idaho was on fire,” Olivier said. “I thought we kept their heads up, like, we didn’t get down when they were busting those 3s. We have a great determination, this team is very competitive.”
The Lady Rebels took a 53-51 lead on a 3-pointer by Tiara Tucker with 35 seconds left in the third quarter and did not trail again. Dakota Gonzalez led UNLV with 20 points and eight rebounds — UNLV controlled the boards 48-27.
Idaho (2-5) was led by Geraldine McCorkell, who had 14 points off the bench. The Vandals played tough twice here, losing 60-49 to 24th-ranked Oregon State on Friday.
“We’re still finding our way, we’re young, you can see our execution is not where it needs to be right now,” Idaho coach Jon Newlee said. “I like to schedule this type of tournaments, tough opponents, to get us ready. We need to win the Big Sky (Conference) to go to the NCAA Tournament. That’s what we’re about.”
* Robert Collias is at rcollias@mauinews.com
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UNLV (73)
Tucker 1-3 1-2 4, Johnson 5-11 6-8 17, Strawther 5-8 1-3 13, Sheppard 0-0 0-0 0, Wheatley 2-8 0-2 4, Gonzalez 7-16 3-4 20, Anderson 1-3 0-0 2, Powell 3-7 0-0 7, Lee 0-0 0-0 0, Bell 3-6 0-0 6, Wade 0-2 0-0 0. Team 27-64 11-19 73.
IDAHO (61)
Wilson 4-7 0-1 10, Reilly 3-9 3-5 12, O’Neill 0-0 1-2 1, Daugherty 0-0 3-4 3, Hadden 0-0 0-0 0, Pierce 2-8 0-0 6, Ferenz 1-4 0-0 3, Krause 3-7 0-0 9, McCorkell 5-15 0-0 14, Trujillo 1-2 0-0 3. Totals 19-52 7-10 61.
UNLV 22 13 19 19–73
Idaho 11 22 20 8–61