BYU basketball: Cougars fall short as UNLV moves on to MWC championship game

LAS VEGAS — Despite a late Jimmer Fredette-led run Friday night at the Thomas & Mack Center, the BYU Cougars have now lost eight straight games to UNLV in Las Vegas and were knocked out of the Mountain West Conference men's basketball tournament, dropping a down-to-the-wire battle to the Rebels 70-66.

"We played our hearts out tonight, and played well enough to win. It just didn't happen," BYU coach Dave Rose said.

The No. 14 Cougars (29-5) now have to wait until Sunday afternoon see where they'll play next week in the NCAA Tournament. The Rebels advance to face the San Diego State Aztecs tonight for the league's automatic invitation to the Big Dance.

"We've been beat a few times, but not very many," Rose said, alluding to BYU's expected lock status for an NCAA bid on Sunday.

Apparently, the basket at the Thomas & Mack looks bigger for the UNLV Rebels whenever BYU comes to town.

When the Rebels ran BYU out of the gym last month, they came out and hit nine of their first 11 shots from 3-point range and 12-of-23 for the game. In knocking BYU out of the MWC tournament on Friday, the Rebels came out blazing again by nailing 7-of-10 shots from deep in the opening half.

For the game, the Rebels hit 8-of-19 3-pointers. This comes from a team that is shooting under 33 percent from 3-point range on the season. And making shots was really the difference, as UNLV shot 56 percent from the field while BYU managed only 40 percent. Surprisingly, with numbers like that, BYU actually led 19-14 by drilling four of its first five long-range shots.

"We matched them and I think that was what was important," Rose said.

But when the Cougars missed seven of their next nine 3-point shots while the Rebels stayed hot, the tide turned in a hurry.

"We executed our game plan and did exactly what we wanted to do, we just came up a couple of points short," Rose said.

An 18-5 run put the Rebels up 32-24. The Cougars cut that lead down to two, but the Rebels still led 41-34 at the break on a Chase Stanback basket at horn.

Early in second half, UNLV pushed the lead to 11 on back-to-back hoops by Brice Massamba. But the Cougars, trailing 57-47 with eight minutes remaining, changed to a zone defense and tied the game 59-59 on a 12-2 run, with Fredette scoring eight of his game-high 30 in the stretch. The Cougars then took the lead for the first time in 20 minutes on Michael Loyd's twisting layup.