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"It's a nice feeling. I'm very happy for those kids in there, and it's amazing the difference in the locker room in 50 hours. I really expected we'd play well. I told them in pre-game that I expected this would be our best game of the year, and it was one of those good kind because you know you have to play well to win, and it's not going to be something where you can just show up. But I was really pleased with what they did. "We got a lot of help from our bench. It was one of those few nights that Raef doesn't come through with his 20 and 10 and that kind of thing. He was in foul trouble. The last call was an unusual one, but the two before that were just as silly as they could be. One of them was his fault and one of them was Billy's fault, fumbling the ball out of bounds, and that got Raef in that position. "I will say this, though. Raef was a lot better defensively tonight, and we needed him to be. Raef and T.J. really had a tough matchup when we were man-to-man because one of them was going to be guarding Nesby. And even though you look down there and Nesby had a lot of points, I thought they did a good job on him, and especially T.J. "He (Nesby) put them up there. He had 47 shots in their first two games, but they need him to do that right now. In all fairness, Vegas is not the team that they will be later when they get those four kids back. (Starting forward Kevin Simmons and center Keon Clark. were suspended by the NCAA for 14 and 11 games, respectively, for accepting airline tickets purchased with money from an agent.) We had such an advantage depth-wise and size-wize. Billy's (Bayno, UNLV coach) not going to beel good about losing, but he's really got to feel good about how thry're performing right now without those kids. "He had one right there at the end of the quarter that I thought was a fantastic play by Nick and by Billy that Eric dunked right at the buzzer. Those guys kept their heads up, but Eric can really run. I was pleased with what Eric did. I think Kenny Gregory came alive a little bit more tonight. Paul was much better. Ryan Robertson was much better than he was the other night. Again, go down the line and I think we got good play from everybody who was in there. And Billy got hot a little, and that changes the whole tempo of the game. Billy can score points about as quickly as anybody I've ever seen, and he's been shooting it so badly, he was due. I just wanted it to be in my lifetime, and it did come through tonight because he shot it in tonight and made some big plays for us. "You know what's great is our crowd has been great every single game we've had. It's a non-conference game, and until this game maybe not the biggest games in the world, but the crowd's been sensational. I told Bill Rafftery, this was the first time he's ever done a game here, and Bill's a friend of mine. I said, 'You'll enjoy this place because these people know what's going on in basketball.' "We played Ryan as much as we did against Western KentuckyJelani. He doesn't feel comfortable and doesn't know what we want most of the time. It's my job over the next couple of practices to get him some more time and try to give Ryan some time over there on the sidelines during practice so Jelani can get the feel of wha't s going on."