UNLV could be ready to climb the Mountain West this season

The once-proud UNLV men’s basketball program has only finished in the top half of the Mountain West standings once in the past five years, and three times in the last decade.

No one is calling for the 2025-2026 conference campaign, the premiere run under new coach Josh Pastner, to reverse the descent as it begins on December 20 with a home game versus Fresno State. The Mountain West preseason poll slotted UNLV as dead average at sixth, but that was before a trouble-filled month-and-a-half of non-conference play that left it with a 4-6 record.

The Rebels lost three times as a double-digit favorite in Las Vegas to teams from lesser leagues, including a 63-60 setback to lowly Tennessee State of the Ohio Valley Conference on December 15 at Lee’s Family Forum.

“I keep saying, we’ve just got to get to conference play,” Pastner said after one of the losses. “I really believe this: When we get to Mountain West play and we’re healthy, I think we’re going to be a really good basketball team.”

If nothing else, Pastner—the veteran former head at Memphis and Georgia Tech—has infused the program with a new brand of energy and positivity.

But his bullishness on his first Scarlet and Gray team—despite the early returns—might be more than blind optimism.

No one else may be expecting it anymore, but UNLV has a chance to sneak up on its conference rivals and become a factor by the time the Mountain West tournament rolls around in March.

The disastrous non-conference results mean the Rebels will have to win the bracket to snap their program record 12-year drought without reaching the NCAA Tournament. That’s unlikely but not impossible with some better luck.

Coaches notoriously say they won’t use injuries as an excuse and then allude to them anyway, but this is one of the rare cases where Pastner has a legitimate gripe.

Midway through non-conference play, the Rebels were down to seven out of 13 scholarship players.

Only five players have played in all 10 games—junior guard Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn, senior guard Al Green, senior forward Walter Brown, senior forward Kimani Hamilton and freshman forward Tyrin Jones.

Gibbs-Lawhorn and Hamilton are the only projected full-time starters in that group while Jones has not been at 100% but battled through injuries to stay on the court.

“Never,” Pastner responded when asked if he’s faced similar challenges at past coaching stops. “This is the first time I’ve ever had to deal with this amount of injuries.”

To make matters worse, Pastner ascribes to the tried belief that a team’s point guard and center are the hardest positions to replace. That’s what he’s had to attempt without junior point guard Myles Che, who was brought in from UC Santa Barbara to lead the offense, and sophomore big man Emmanuel Stephen, an Arizona transfer.

The absences of fellow frontcourt players Ladji Dembele (a junior), Naas Cunningham (a freshman) and Jacob Bannarbie (a sophomore and the lone holdover from last year’s team) exacerbated Stephen’s absence.

At one point during the Players Era Festival at MGM Grand Garden Arena—where UNLV got blown out against Alabama and fell apart in winnable games against Maryland and Rutgers—Pastner said internal metrics rated UNLV as “the smallest team in the country.”

The medical aim was for the team to clear up their injuries in time for the Mountain West, and it’s happened, to an extent.

Stephen debuted by starting in the last two non-conference games while Cunningham and Bannarbie supplied interior depth off the bench.

Dembele and Che remain sidelined by lingering foot injuries but they could return in the next couple weeks.

“We’re the injury capital of the world right now but it’s go time after Christmas break,” Pastner said.

UNLV caught a break with its conference schedule, beginning with home games against Fresno State (6-5) and then Air Force (3-8) on January 3. They were the two teams picked to finish last in the Mountain West.

The top of the conference doesn’t look as formidable as expected either. San Diego State came into the year as an odds-on favorite, but it’s lost three games including a stunning upset at home against Troy.

Fellow contender Boise State lost to Division II Hawaii Pacific while defending regular season co-champion Colorado State got shocked by the University of Denver.

As deep as UNLV has sunk at its lowest so far, the heights have been just as impressive as it beat both Memphis and Stanford on the road.

Those performances gave Pastner confidence that his hopes for the team are still possible this season.

He hasn’t gotten the Rebels off to the start he wanted, but there were extenuating circumstances that help leave him genuinely undeterred from the ultimate goal.

“When you take something over—and this is my third program I’ve taken over—in year one, you’re trying to establish culture,” Pastner said. “You’re trying to rebuild it back up. Things don’t happen overnight. There’s no snap of the fingers and saying, ‘This is instant.’ It takes time. I have complete belief in our vision and our clarity on the path of how we want to get there.”