LV women’s basketball renaissance powered by locals

The UNLV women’s basketball team’s season was a story of homegrown talent delivering homegrown success. And for that, our community can be proud.

Led by first-year coach Lindy La Rocque, a Durango High product, and featuring several standout players from Las Vegas, the Lady Rebels finished second in the Mountain West Conference during the regular season and picked up numerous all-conference honors. That was a remarkable accomplishment on its own, but what makes it even more impressive is that the team was picked to finish ninth in the league and is one of the youngest teams in top-tier college basketball.

At 15-8, La Rocque’s squad put together the second-best regular season in team history, including a school-record 9-0 run in its road games.

For that, La Rocque was named conference Mountain West Coach of the Year — the first Lady Rebels coach to earn that honor, and only the second conference honor winner since Jim Bolla was named Big West Coach of the Year after the 1989-90 season.

Joining La Rocque in receiving postseason honors were fellow Las Vegas hometowners Bailey Thomas, the first Lady Rebel to earn back-to-back Defensive Player of the Year honors, and Desi-rae Young, who was named Freshman of the Year. Jade Thomas, who is Bailey’s younger sister and is a Centennial grad, made the All-freshman Team along with Young. In addition, junior guard Nia Johnson from Sacramento, Calif., was selected to the all-conference Team.

It was wonderful to see UNLV shine so brightly with La Rocque in charge, because she’s about as Las Vegas as they come. The daughter of Al La Rocque, who became one of the valley’s winningest coaches while leading boys’ and girls’ teams at Western and Durango high schools, La Roque was a ball girl for the men’s and women’s teams at UNLV. She went on to be an all-state player at Durango, then make four straight NCAA Tournament appearances at Stanford, including the 2010 national title game. She returned to Stanford as an assistant coach in 2017, and the Cardinal made the tournament during all three of her years there.

Now, her championship mentality is showing at UNLV. More quickly than most observers thought possible, the Lady Rebels made big waves in the conference this year.

Along with the Las Vegas Aces, who are preparing to start their season after finishing as runner-up in the WNBA last year, UNLV is fueling dreams of Las Vegas becoming a women’s basketball powerhouse.

Unfortunately, UNLV’S dream season ended with a thud in the Mountain West Conference tournament, when the Lady Rebels were eliminated in their first game. UNLV is highly unlikely to be selected for further postseason tournament play, so we’ll have to wait until next year to see the team in action again.

However, the loss didn’t diminish any of the luster of the Lady Rebels’ regular season. As they showed us by far exceeding expectations in La Rocque’s first season, they’ll definitely be a team to watch next year.