LAS VEGAS – Rutgers men's basketball is set for the third game of the Players Era Festival. The Scarlet Knights will play on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 27 against UNLV. The game will tip off at 4:30 pm Eastern Time, 1:30 pm local time, at Michelob ULTRA Arena. The game will be nationally televised by truTV (and can be viewed on HBO MAX) with Brandon Gaudin, Robbie Hummel and Jared Greenberg on the call. It will be the final game of the tournament.
Rutgers stands at 4-3 overall and enters the contest looking to snap a three-game losing streak. The Scarlet Knights started the Players Era Festival with contests against No. 17/16 Tennessee (85-60) and Notre Dame (68-63).
Dylan Grant leads three Rutgers players in double-figuring scoring, posting 15.4 points per game. He has 108 points this season, nearly reaching last season's total output of 124 points, done in 21 games.
Jamichael Davis had a career game against the Fighting Irish, posting a career-high 21 points behind a career-best five three-pointers. He is shooting 43.1 percent from the field, 52.6 percent from behind the three-point line, and 76.2 percent at the charity stripe this season. All three are current career bests for the junior.
UNLV is led by first year head coach Josh Pastner, who previously spent 2009-2023 as the head coach at Memphis and Georgia Tech, with five NCAA Tournament appearances. The Rebels are 3-4 this year, holding wins over Memphis, Saint Joe's and Chattanooga. Thus far at the Players Era, the local squad has lost to Big Ten foe Maryland (74-67) and No. 8 Alabama (115-76).
Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn leads the team at 17.6 points per game. He previously played in the Big Ten at Illinois and has played twice against Rutgers over the past two seasons. This season, he has three games of at least 20 points. Isaac Williamson averages 15.6 points across five of the team's seven games, while Kimani Hamilton is at 13.4 points per game.
A high scoring squad, UNLV has scored 609 points and allowed exactly 609 points this season (87.0 points per game, both scored and allowed). The team shoots 46.6% from the field (206-of-442) and allows 46.6 percent as well (196-of-421). The Rebels average 30.3 free throw attempts per game, 15
th nationally. Tyrin Jones is 25
th nationally with 15 blocks. UNLV's roster has only one returning player and have nine transfers and three freshmen.
This will be the first time that RU plays a team from the current Mountain West Conference since facing Air Force on New Year's Eve in 2004 (a 70-53 loss). The last win over a current Mountain West Conference team was on January 19, 1993, a 113-93 win over Utah State.
Rutgers and UNLV have previously faced each other three times, with UNLV holding a 2-1 advantage. The Scarlet Knights won the last meeting, a 91-85 overtime victory at home on December 7, 1991. The Rebels won the previous two games. The first was a 115-73 victory on February 3, 1991 by an undefeated UNLV team behind 29 points from Anderson Hunt and a triple-double by Stacey Augmon against a RU team that made the NCAA Tournament.
The first meeting was an 89-88 UNLV win at a neutral site game on February 5, 1977 at the Spectrum. That Rebels team under head coach Jerry Tarkanian made the school's first Final Four appearance, finishing third.
Rutgers returns home for the Big Ten opener next Tuesday. The Scarlet Knights host No. 1 Purdue on December 2 at 8 pm, a FS1 game. The Boilermakers are 6-0 including ranked wins over No. 8 Alabama and No. 15 Texas Tech and will play Eastern Illinois on Black Friday prior to the trip to New Jersey. Following the Purdue game, RU is away from home for the next two games, facing No. 7/6 Michigan (Dec. 6) and Seton Hall (Dec. 13).
