Without a doubt, the second half is the most important stretch of any collegiate basketball game. Whether it’s a tie game or the home team is holding on to a minuscule lead, every shot matters. Free throw shooting is crucial, and the best part about having the home-court advantage is for home fans to do everything and anything to distract the visiting team’s shooter at the line. So, with that in mind, why has UNLV Basketball positioned its media table, not the student section, behind the visitor’s second half basket?
We can argue back and forth about how much the crowds actually do affect the shot from the charity stripe, but why not try? What’s there to actually lose? Anyone who watches college basketball can see how important those final moments, and distractions the fans bring, can help the home team. Some schools have even turned it into an art form.
Arizona State University, for example, has “The Curtain of Distraction.”
Which brings me to the main point: How can the Thomas & Mack Center position the media, whose job is to objectively cover the game without emotion, right behind the away team’s basket during the second half while our own student sections get relegated to the position furthest away from the action? It doesn’t make sense, but there must be a reason.
Sin City Sports Mockery reached out to UNLV Associate Athletics Director Andy Grossman to find out the rationale, but had not heard back by the time this story was published. Perhaps there is a legit reason, but it just seems completely contrary to any other big time basketball program setup.
You would think that a venue with a section deemed ‘Gucci Row’ could actually get a good visual on the televised games, by having an exciting environment, instead of getting a look at dimly lit Apple logos and mouse-pads behind the hoops. The tops of a bunch of out-of-shape non-athletes’ heads isn’t very intimidating, unless dandruff and hair grease somehow has become frightening to Millennials.
As a regular within The Rebellion, we demand a change. How awesome would it have been in the hay-days of the SDSU or even farther back BYU rivalries to have our students be up close and personal to the likes of Jimmer Freddette or Steve Fisher? Don’t you think they would have an encouraging piece of advice for either? That’s how you bring the excitement back into this program.
We are guaranteed at least one home game against Reno every year, and we got to let the kids start stirring it up with Musselman & Co. Bring back the energy, bring back some controversy, bring back the creativity and allow the group that gave us “Khem Kong” a chance to spread it artistic wings.
The sight of Khem Kong — the largest prop in college sports history — along with the Fatheads and hypnotic ”Wheels of Doom,” is quite the event. Modeled after former Runnin’ Rebel Khem Birch, Khem Kong current resides at the PKWY Tavern off the 215 and Flamingo (formerly Roadrunner). You can actually eat dinner while Khem Kong eyes your extra tater tots.
I’m not saying that it would be a game changer, but it would help make the Mack rock a little more once again, especially if our helps our Rebs start runnin’ again too. With the Golden Knights taking so much of UNLV Basketball’s luster this past year, it’s high time for a change in protocol. It’s not 1991. Things change. Times change. Hell, whiny social justice warriors have even tried to change ‘Hey Reb’ and the logo, which failed miserably.
I prefer this one instead.
Move the media, move the band, make this for the students. If things keep going the way they are, and fans have other options to go to during the season (Golden Knights games, most notably), then you might only get the students in the T&M Center, so focus it around them. It’s high time the powers-that-be figure it out and make a move that caters to the students, not anyone else.
Really, in the end, whose school is it anyways?
