Nevada blows out EA Sports West All Stars 89-60

RENO -- Nevada's final exhibition game before the regular season begins was about as exciting watching the clouds roll in.

There was only person and one thing that sparked any enthusiasm into the 1,449 fans in attendance at Lawlor Events Center. And that was 7-foot-1 Jason Eversteyn, who hit a jumper as time expired as the Wolf Pack cruised to a 89-60 win over the EA Sports West All Stars on Thursday night.

Just to put this yawner in perspective, the second loudest cheer came when Eversteyn entered the game with 4:00 minutes remaining. By that point, Nevada led 78-49.

Sophomore Kirk Snyder, who, along with Jerry Petty, led Nevada with 17 points has seen enough college has beens.

"I'm looking forward to the season," said Snyder, who scored a team-high 23 points in a 87-74 win over Global Sports last Thursday. "It would be really nice to compete against somebody our age."

That won't come until the Wolf Pack plays at the University of San Diego on Nov. 23. Last night, it was guys like 30-something Scott Brooks, who won two NBA Finals with the Houston Rockets during his career there between 1992-95.

"To tell you the truth, I didn't even know who he was," said Nevada's Todd Okeson about Brooks, who had an 11-year NBA career."

There were others, too. Guys like Cal State-Northridge's Markus Carr and California's Ryan Forehan-Kelly. But it didn't matter who EA Sports put out there. The Wolf Pack handled them all.

"We were just trying to play against ourselves," Snyder said. "When the season comes, it's going to be a lot different."

The Wolf Pack never trailed in the game and used a 10-0 run midway through the first half to go into halftime leading 39-25. Petty's 3-pointer with 14:49 left in the game gave Nevada a 53-31 lead. EA Sports cut the lead to 57-44 after Forehan-Kelly's basket with 11:32 remaining.

Nevada countered with a 15-0 run to go back up 72-44 and back-to-back dunks by Snyder and Garry Hill-Thomas a few minutes later put the Wolf Pack up 76-47, their largest lead of the game. Hill-Thomas finished with nine points. Okeson, who played the point along with Petty in the absence of starter Terrance Green, finished with 15 points. Kevinn Pinkney and Dean Browne both scored 10 points as Nevada had five players who scored in double figures.

"I'm not satisfied," Petty said. "We still gotta' make that next step. Right now, we need to work on a lot of stuff."

Even coach Trent Johnson, who's never happy with defensive lapses, understood why his team let up for a few moments on Thursday.

"It wasn't there for 40 minutes," Johnson said of his team's defensive pressure. "It's hard for kids when they get a lead. Good teams, they increase their lead 10, 15, 20 (points). They don't have any mental lapses. We had a few."

Carr led EA sports with 17 points and Jack Hartman had 12. EA Sports was playing its eighth game of a 12-game tour. With Thursday's loss, it is now 2-6, with its only wins coming against Cal State-Northridge and Oregon State.

Notes....Starting point guard Terrance Green missed Thursday's game because he violated a team academic rule. It had nothing to do with the university's standards...Freshman Marcelus Kemp, who starred for Garfield High in Seattle, didn't play in either exhibition game because of a foot injury. All indications is that Kemp will redshirt this season...EA Sports' Scott Brooks finished with four points in 20 minutes. The former NBA player, who won two championships with Houston in the mid 90s, also acts as the team's assistant coach...Sparks High graduate London Wilson played four minutes in the second half and finished with two points on 1-of-2 shooting...Elko's Sean Paul played 12 minutes and went 0-for-4 from the field.