Sharing some Thanksgiving traditions

Jerry Tarkanian

Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009 | 9:41 p.m.

I always spend Thanksgiving morning at Piero's Restaurant serving food with some of the other community leaders.

Freddie (Piero’s owner, Glusman) feeds people who are down on their luck and I’ve been helping him do this for about 25 years. It’s a big Thanksgiving dinner with all of the side stuff.

It’s a great way to start the holiday. Freddie serves a lot of people and I’m happy to help.

As for my plans, we always have Thanksgiving dinner at one of my kids’ house. This year it will be at Jodie’s because she has the biggest house.

I love the turkey. That is my favorite part. Jodie also makes grape leaves, which is an Armenian dish (Armenian lamb and rice stuffed in a grape leave). I love those grapes.

We always made sure to arrange for the players to have a place to go for Thanksgiving dinner. Someone always wanted to have them over and Lois and I would take in the rest.

Not going home for Thanksgiving is something the players expected because we usually played right up to the holiday.

I liked going to Anchorage and Fairbanks to play in the Great Alaska Shootout. Those are two beautiful towns to visit.

I remember beating Villanova in Alaska the year after they won the national title. That was a big win for us. We had Anthony Jones, Freddie Banks and Armen Gilliam.

I was at the Southern Illinois game on Saturday and it was a really fun game to watch. Next to Louisville, that will probably be UNLV’s toughest game this year.

That was a really well played game by both teams. It was one of the better December games the Rebels have played since Lon (Rebels coach Kruger) has been here. It was a good win for the Rebels because they beat a good, well-coached team.

Lon is playing 11 kids and running them in and out. I never did that. I only played eight or nine guys at the max.

But it is working for Lon. It was the deciding factor in the Reno game and a deciding factor against Southern Illinois because the Rebels wore them out. They out-raced them up and down the floor, especially at the end of the game.

I’m a real big fan of Tre'Von Willis, who is a Fresno kid. I watched him when he was in high school and was surprised he went to Memphis. UNLV got a good catch in him.

He played like he was getting ready to jump to the NBA. He was just super in every aspect — shooting, passing and penetrating.