REBELS FIND IT HARD TO PUT AWAY PESKY CARDINALS
Starting today through Friday, we will revisit UNLV’s incredible run and other tournament highlights in a series of stories. Today: The Rebels' only close call in the tournament. It came against 12th seed Ball State.
By Mike Lopresti, NCAA.com
Written in 2015 on the 25th anniversary
The UNLV march to the championship was one of utter domination.
The Rebels outscored five opponents by an average of 22 points, putting up 100.4 points a game. Unstoppable.
But didn’t they play six teams? Well, about that other one. In the Sweet 16, all claims of UNLV power and invulnerability were temporarily put on hold, by a team from some place called Ball State.
The Rebels were stifled on offense, crushed 51-36 in rebounding, and had been unable to faze the Cardinals in the least. A thunderous dunk in UNLV’s faces by Ball State’s 6-3 Chandler Thompson had let the Rebels know what they were up against.
It went to the final seconds, the Cardinals down 69-67 with a chance to tie or win, but their last play went awry and UNLV had slipped by, having been held nearly 32 points under their tournament scoring average.
“That Monday, my daughter was born,” said Thompson. "They induced labor so I wouldn’t miss her being born when we played UNLV.
"Our mindset was, if you can make UNLV play a half-court game, you shut down 60 to 70 percent of their offense. They were called the Runnin’ Rebels for a reason. We had guys like Paris McCurdy and Curtis Kidd, fifth-year seniors. For UNLV to come in and intimidate them, it wasn’t happening. We had guys that had been in the trenches.
“It was a bittersweet situation. We felt like if we could have gotten by Vegas, who was going to stop us? We felt like if we had gotten past them, we were going to the Final Four. They blew out everybody else.
"We woke up UNLV to make them a better team than what they were. [UNLV guard] Greg Anthony even walked around wearing a Ball State hat at the Final Four, to make sure that wouldn’t happen again. He showed respect to the Ball State program wearing that hat.’’
(Norm.vegas: Ball State’s performance was no fluke. A 12-seed under new coach Dick Hunsaker, who replaced Rick Majerus, the Cardinals upset Louisville, 62-60, to become the first Mid-American Conference team to reach the Sweet Sixteen.)
