Loyola Fizzles After Quick Start : College basketball: Lions fall to 0-5 by losing to Nevada Las Vegas, 93-77.

LAS VEGAS — Loyola Marymount’s basketball drought continued here Saturday night, with a chance to go oh-for-December ahead.

The Lions of Coach John Olive started fast and played aggressively throughout but still fell to 0-5, losing to the Nevada Las Vegas Runnin’ Rebels, 93-77.

Ahead for Loyola is always-tough UC Santa Barbara on Monday night, unknown quantity San Diego State on Thursday night and Texas A&M;, a recent winner over UNLV, on Dec. 30.

All those games, however, are at Loyola’s Gersten Pavilion, so the drought might end, indeed, before the Jan. 3 home game against Fairfield.

Saturday night’s game was a strange matchup, in that these two teams, who played in the 1990 West Regional final and had a chance to go to the Final Four, were each without a victory going in. Coach Rollie Massimino’s UNLV team came in 0-2.

And the way Loyola started out, it looked as if the Rebels would be the ones run out of the building. An early 12-0 spurt put the Lions in charge, 18-4.

But when Las Vegas answered that later in the half with a 21-2 run of its own for a 25-20 lead, the challenge of the underdog Lions seemed to have been answered, even though Loyola held a 37-36 lead at halftime.

Then in the second half, UNLV junior Reggie Manuel, appearing to get into the flow of the true wide-open basketball that is traditional here, sank five of seven three-point shots and led his team on a long-range shooting spree that included 10 three-point baskets in the second half.

That left the Lions chasing and scratching and clawing to catch up, and even a 17-point game by Wyking Jones and a 16-point effort by Rahim Harris wasn’t enough to achieve that.