A look at the key moments, players and plays from the Nevada Wolf Pack's 105-73 victory over the Texas Southern Tigers on Saturday at Lawlor Events Center:
KEY FACTOR
This is what happens when this Wolf Pack team goes up against a team that plays absolutely no defense. Texas Southern, now 2-8 on the season, simply dares its opponents to shoot wide-open threes and the Wolf Pack certainly wasn't afraid of the challenge. The Pack knocked down a school-record 18 3-pointers (on 36 attempts). Texas Southern, which has allowed 85 points a game this year, has now allowed 119 3-pointers, an average of 12 a game (sixth-most in Division I-A). It took the Pack all of 18 seconds to toss up its first three (good by Nick Davidson) and another 43 seconds to shoot its second (good by Xavier DuSell). More than half (36-of-61) the Pack shot attempts were threes and exactly half (18-of-36) of their successful shots were threes.
KEY PACK RUN
The run that basically ended the game was 13-0 over the final 2:14 of the first half and first eight seconds of the second half, turning an already commanding 45-31 lead into a game-over 58-31 advantage. From that point on, over the final 19:52, the game was nothing more than a relaxing shoot-around as the Wolf Pack never led by fewer than 19 points. Threes by Nick Davidson and Xavier DuSell started and ended the 13-0 run. Seven points in the paint by Justin McBride (four) and Kobe Sanders (three) were the meat in that three-point sandwich.
KEY TEXAS SOUTHERN RUN
It wasn't so much a run as it was the Wolf Pack taking a quick breather after leading 8-0, 16-4 and 21-9 to open the game. Pack coach Alford took out starters Tre Coleman and Kobe Sanders with the Pack up 16-7 with 14:37 left in the first half, lifted starter Brandon Love with 13:32 left and then yanked the remaining two starters (Nick Davidson and Xavier DuSell) with 12:12 up. The next thing the Pack knew it was leading just 24-20 with 10:33 to go in the half as Texas Southern went on an extended 11-3 run that lasted all of two minutes. The final 30-plus minutes belonged to the Pack (81-53).
KEY PACK TONE-SETTER
Xavier DuSell, as Wolf Pack fans have already seen this year countless times, will never pass up an open 3-pointer. DuSell equaled his career high with seven threes against Texas Southern on 11 attempts in a mere 25 minutes. DuSell, who has also played for Wyoming and Fresno State in the Mountain West, is the Wolf Pack's hired gunslinger this year. The Pack lost its top two 3-point shooters off last year's team (Jarod Lucas, Hunter McIntosh) and replaced them with a guy who is even more bold, aggressive and confident beyond the arc than the two were combined. DuSell, 28-of-63 on threes (.444) this year over just 238 total minutes, has seemingly made everyone else's 3-point shot better with his presence alone. Every Pack player on the roster who has taken at least 10 threes this year (except Tre Coleman, who is a respectable 14-of-41), is shooting 40 percent or better from beyond the arc.
KEY STAT
What else? The Wolf Pack's 3-point shooting this year is catching everyone's attention except, maybe, the lackadaisical Texas Southern defense. The Pack is fourth in the nation right now in 3-point shooting percentage at .419, draining 95-of-227. The Wolf Pack's school record for 3-point efficiency is .431 in 1984-85 but that team was just 118-of-274 for the season. The last Pack team to make 40 percent or better was 2006-07 (.414). That team was led by Nick Fazekas, who was at .458 efficiency (27-of-59) and Marcelus Kemp, who was at .415 (80-of-193). The 2017-18 Pack owns the school record for the most three attempts (904) and successful threes (354).
KEY HISTORICAL NOTE
The Wolf Pack had a season-high 29 assists against Texas Southern. Nick Davidson and Kobe Sanders each had seven assists, Tre Coleman had six and Daniel Foster had four off the bench. The Pack record for assists in a game is 35 against Loyola Marymount in a 101-84 win on Feb. 15, 1973, a remarkable achievement considering there were no threes to shoot. Center Pete Padgett had a team-high 10 assists in that game to complete a triple-double (17 points, 30 rebounds). The only times since the 1999-200 season the Pack has had more than 28 assists in a game was 31 against Portland last year and 29 against Texas Southern on Saturday and 29 against Holy Names in 2015-16. Foster had nine assists and Davidson had eight against Portland last Nov. 18, 2023.
KEY PACK CONSISTENCY
The Wolf Pack had 55 points in the first half and 50 in the second half against Texas Southern. It is just the sixth game since 1998-99 that the Pack has scored 50 or more in each half. Only one of those six was in a loss, 110-104 to BYU on Dec. 22, 2009, when Jimmer Fredette of BYU had 33 points off the bench.
UP NEXT
The Wolf Pack (8-3) will open Mountain West play Saturday at Lawlor Events Center against the Colorado State Rams. Colorado State is 5-5 this season, having lost five of its last seven games, with a game against Radford on Tuesday (Dec. 17) at home before heading to Lawlor Events Center.