Rutgers men’s basketball will play UNLV on Thursday, November 27, in the final game of the Players Era Festival. The matchup is scheduled for 4:30 pm Eastern Time at Michelob ULTRA Arena in Las Vegas. The game will be broadcast nationally on truTV and available for streaming on HBO MAX, with commentary from Brandon Gaudin, Robbie Hummel, and Jared Greenberg.
The Scarlet Knights enter the contest with a 4-3 record and are seeking to end a three-game losing streak. Rutgers opened the tournament with losses to No. 17/16 Tennessee and Notre Dame.
Dylan Grant leads Rutgers in scoring this season, averaging 15.4 points per game. He has scored 108 points so far, nearly matching his total output from last season over 21 games. Jamichael Davis recently set career highs against Notre Dame with 21 points and five three-pointers made. Davis is currently shooting personal bests of 43.1 percent from the field, 52.6 percent from three-point range, and 76.2 percent on free throws.
UNLV comes into the game with a 3-4 record under first-year head coach Josh Pastner, who previously led programs at Memphis and Georgia Tech and has made five NCAA Tournament appearances during his coaching career. This season UNLV has defeated Memphis, Saint Joe’s, and Chattanooga but lost to Maryland and No. 8 Alabama during the Players Era Festival.
Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn leads UNLV in scoring at 17.6 points per game; he previously played at Illinois in the Big Ten Conference and has faced Rutgers twice before over the past two seasons. Isaac Williamson averages 15.6 points across five games this year while Kimani Hamilton contributes an average of 13.4 points per game.
UNLV’s offense has produced exactly as many points as it has allowed this season—609 each—resulting in an average of 87 points both scored and conceded per game. The team shoots at a rate of 46.6 percent from the field while allowing opponents to shoot at that same percentage; they also rank among national leaders in free throw attempts per game (30.3). Tyrin Jones is ranked nationally for blocks with a total of fifteen so far this season.
This will mark Rutgers’ first matchup against a current Mountain West Conference team since facing Air Force in December of 2004; their last win over such an opponent was against Utah State in January of 1993.
Rutgers holds one win out of three previous meetings against UNLV—the most recent being a home overtime victory in December of 1991.
Following Thursday’s contest, Rutgers returns home to open Big Ten play against No.1 Purdue on December 2 before traveling for road games against Michigan (December 6) and Seton Hall (December 13).
