Courtesy of Braidon Nourse
LAS VEGAS – Win No. 700 for No. 7 Nevada coach Steve Alford was, according to him, a bit overdue. But sweet for it to advance his team to the Mountain West quarterfinals.
On Wednesday, the Wolf Pack found it from the entire depth chart.
All nine players who featured for the Wolf Pack scored in a 86-71 win over No. 10 Fresno State in its Credit Union 1 Mountain West Basketball Championship opener. Eight of them had five or more points, which is tied for the tournament record.
“We’re doing some things now, changing on the fly,” Alford said. “It’s all different defenses and offenses they’re trying to get to learn on the fly.
“Late in the season, that’s not easy. These guys just continue to fight and that’s all we’re asking. We obviously know each day it gets harder. This time of year, you want to be going into the next day and we’ve got a game under our belts now, and now we’ve got to come after a very, very good Colorado State team.”
The Wolf Pack got things going early. After the Bulldogs scored the first basket, Nevada went on a 28-5 run in just the first 10 minutes.
Crucial to the advantage was guard Chuck Bailey, who had 12 points, with a trio of triples serving as a springboard to building a huge lead.
By design, but a little more by necessity, Bailey has been thrust into a larger role with the Wolf Pack due to injury. In his last six games combined, he scored just 10 points. Wednesday afternoon, he racked up 11 in the first half alone.
“(He’s) somebody who hadn’t played in a Mountain West tournament before. In your first 20 minutes, to do what he did is impressive, and we needed that,” Alford said. “I think that helped get us the double-digit lead we needed in the first half. It kind of calmed our guys a little bit and we could sense that, and he can really guard. I liked his energy the whole night. He did a really good job for us.”
In contrast to the first game of the day, the Bulldogs never came to within 10 points of a comeback effort. That charge was led by guard Kobe Sanders, who for a while was on triple-double watch, with 17 points, 10 assists and seven rebounds.
Fourteen of those points came in the second half alone.
Many of them came in the paint, and that’s just about how the game was won. Nevada outscored Fresno State 48-26 on the day.
“It was a team effort. Everybody was hot in the beginning and I was getting everybody involved. They made my job easy,” Sanders said. “When Chuck hits three 3s in a row, it makes us all look good.
“I felt like (the second half performance) was easy. My team got me involved and everybody was going. So it’s easy once you see one bucket go in, then they all start falling.”
The Wolf Pack will meet No. 2 Colorado State in the quarterfinals on Thursday.
–mw–
