The Nevada men’s basketball team stretched its winning streak to three after a dominant 94-69 win over Fresno State at home. The dominance was led by forwards Nick Davidson and Justin McBride, who scored a combined 44 points for the Pack.
Both teams’ offenses started slow, scoring 10 points each in the first five minutes. Three-point shooting was Nevada’s biggest strength in the first half, with guard Daniel Foster draining a three-point shot within the first four minutes.
As a team, Nevada shot an even 40 percent from beyond the arc in the first half. Forward Tre Coleman, who was suspended from last week’s game against Air Force due to missing a team practice, came in off the bench and hit two quick threes to add to the team’s total.
The second half was all Wolf Pack, as they scored 53 points in the final 20 minutes. It was led by Davidson and McBride, who both had some posterizing dunks during a 16-point run through the first five and a half minutes of the second half.
Davidson finished the night with a career-tying 25 points, while McBride had a career-high 19 points.
“Playing together, playing connected,” Davidson said. “I don’t think either of us really forced anything. We really let the game come to us, and we really let our teammates find us in places. I think that can be attributed to why we had so many assists tonight as well.”
Starting guards Xavier DuSell and Kobe Sanders also collected double-digit points, with DuSell knocking in 15 and Sanders with 10.
With a high lead late in the second half, head coach Steve Alford elected to bring in forward Jeriah Coleman and fan-favorite walk-on guard Jordan Malmlov. The crowd began chanting “Jordan” late in the game, which prompted Alford to sub him in.
“As soon as I heard the chant I told him to start stretching,” Alford said. “It’s always good when Jordan gets in there. He’s a great teammate. We love getting on him all the time, but it only took him, like, four seconds to get a shot up. But then he had a great assist to Jeri [Coleman]. And even Jeri, we thought he’s gonna red shirt with that new rule. We’re playing him a little bit, and maybe time to look to him to get more minutes, because he’s doing a lot of good things every time we put him out there. But it was great seeing Jordan get out there and do what he does. The guys love him, and he practices hard. He’s the epitome of being a great teammate.”
It was also a dominant night for Nevada’s defense, who didn’t allow Fresno State to take the lead once throughout the game. The Bulldogs were held to 22-52 shooting from the field and 11-25 from deep.
“We did a really good job of implementing what we want to do defensively with our ball pressure, how we were going to guard the triple drive,” Alford said. “We kept them off the foul line in the first half, and I thought that was huge, and we turned them over, we turned Air Force over, we turned UNLV over, and now we’ve turned Fresno over. And so that’s why our defense in the last two weeks has gotten better.”
Fresno State turned the ball over 18 times, resulting in 20 points off of turnovers for Nevada. It was a full team effort from the Pack, who improved to 14-10 overall and 6-7 in conference play.
“Everybody got involved. That’s the biggest thing about basketball, we all got to get involved,” McBride said. “We got very skilled and talented players all around the floor. It was good to get everybody involved. We had a couple of people in double figures, everybody getting assists and stuff. It was very fun.”
Nevada will hit the road to face San Jose State on Friday, Feb 14. Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m.
Dominic Gutierrez can be reached via email dominicgutierrez@unr.edu or via X @d_m_g_16
