Air Force looks to get past UNLV loss

Before practice Monday morning, Air Force’s players got a quick chat from coach Jeff Reynolds. He discussed some of the things that went wrong on Saturday against UNLV, and then the Falcons had a good, hard practice.

Reynolds doesn’t need to dwell very long on the UNLV loss. The players already felt bad enough about losing a game they led deep into the second half. What the Falcons have to do is rebound for Wednesday’s game at sixth-ranked San Diego State.

“You wonder about how our guys will respond to what happened on Saturday, playing 34:52 of good basketball, and down the stretch not being able to finish it out,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds said his players know they are better this season. He thinks they’ll bounce back just fine, even though they’re going into a very tough situation. San Diego State is undefeated and the Falcons have never defeated a top 10 team, losing all 27 opportunities. San Diego State is the highest-ranked team the Falcons have played since Dec. 11, 2004, when it faced No. 3 Georgia Tech.

That’s why the Falcons need to put the UNLV game behind them quickly.

“That game is behind us, and we have another task on Wednesday,” center Taylor Broekhuis said. “It’s a tough one.”

San Diego State coach Steve Fisher said he could sense the Falcons are playing with more confidence this season. UNLV coach Lon Kruger said the same thing about Air Force’s confidence. But tough losses to BYU and UNLV could affect that.

“Confidence is a really, really fickle thing,” Reynolds said. “When you go to BYU and you play hard and lose, you come home and play UNLV and don’t get the outcome you want, I’m sure they start wondering ‘What do we need to do?’”

Reynolds said he thought his team simply needs to come up with a few more big plays that can change the game. Or, at least, don’t make critical errors that lead to big plays for the opponent. That was the key theme of the pre-practice meeting Monday. Reynolds talked about his team needing to get some breaks, but he wasn’t talking about a lucky bounce.

“That’s what we talked to them about this morning – we’ve got to make that happen,” Reynolds said. “We can’t just relax and let it happen, we have to make it happen.”