Columnist Dean Juipe: Great coach simply won’t praise team

Dean Juipe

Friday, May 16, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

IN ITS MOST extreme instances, predictability can be amusing if not an asset.

Take the case of former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, who once told a beat man to make up a quote for him if the reporter was unable to reach the coach later that night as a breaking story appeared to be coming down. "You know what I'd say," Tark said, granting a permission of sorts to fabricate his response.

Luckily, the public's trust wasn't violated that night, as Tarkanian was located and his actual comments were duly recorded.

But he was willing to let a reporter put words in his mouth.

Rodger Fairless could all but do the same.

Can't reach Fairless, the terrific yet incredibly predictable Green Valley baseball coach? Well, it would be easy to just plug in the quotes for him.

"I don't think this year's team has played as hard as last year's team did," is a comment Fairless actually made this week, although it's one he has given on something of a yearly basis.

That perceived weakness, that supposed lack of a killer instinct, is a familiar complaint from Fairless. He even said it a year ago, adding, at the time: "And this year I'm not bs-ing."

Yet, in retrospect, he now likes his 1996 Gators. "They played hard all the time," he said the other day, all but contradicting what he had said a year earlier.

The point is, Fairless will probably speak in his own version of glowing terms a year from now about his '97 Gators, who head into today's conference semifinals as clearly the team to beat. But Fairless isn't much for praise now, not with games still to be played and something still to be proved.

Not only is Green Valley 25-3 with 14 consecutive victories, it has won four straight state championships and the two teams that seemed all season to be the most likely to end that title reign -- Durango and Bishop Gorman -- have already been eliminated from the playoffs.

However, it was only a few weeks ago that Fairless said in a matter-of-fact tone that "I don't think we're the team to beat." That came at a time when the Gators had just won four consecutive games by an aggregate score of 55-4.

You get the picture. Fairless, through whatever idiosyncrasy or personality quirk, has a tendency to regularly belittle his current team while privately taking pride in his players' accomplishments.

Stern, stubborn, unique and easy to peg, he simply never likes to admit he's satisfied.

"If we're not ready now, we're never going to be," he said of today's game at UNLV's Wilson Stadium with Cimarron-Memorial. Well, more to the point, are the Gators ready? "It's hard to tell with these kids," was Fairless' fairly routine response.

You can bet Fairless has them as ready as they'll ever be. While Green Valley isn't much for advance scouting -- "it doesn't matter who we're playing," Fairless always says -- the concept of mental preparation has been stressed to his players all week.

"We've used that, yeah," Fairless said, when asked if he has talked to his guys on the subject of good teams -- Durango and Gorman, specifically -- being beaten by lesser ones, perhaps as a result of a deficiency in mental preparation.

"All I can say about (Durango and Gorman) is that those two teams aren't in it, so evidently they weren't ready to play," Fairless said. "What I thought when I heard they'd lost was that any team not ready to play is going to get beat."

What he would never say: "Oh boy, seeing those teams bounced from the playoffs sure made life easier for us."

But it's the truth. Left standing are the power-packed Gators, looking to bring Fairless an 11th state title; 20-7 Cimarron; 19-9 Silverado; and 16-13 Chaparral. Two of those four will advance to Saturday's conference final, then to next weekend's four-team state tourney at UNLV.

"We just want to try and get past Friday," Fairless said, although the only way the Gators won't play Saturday is in the unlikely event they lose not once but twice today.

It was a typecast response from a guy who likes his typecasting.

As always, at least to those who know him, he was polite and civil and far more accommodating than he prefers to let on. Yet he wasn't about to look ahead and he wasn't about to direct any accolades his players' way.

What that left is this familiar story of a Green Valley team trying to meet its coach's high standards and trying to earn his reluctant respect. It's a story that could have been written without Fairless' none-too-surprising quotes, although it could never be written without him.

He's priceless as a baseball coach and guarded as a commentator.

He's also fun to talk to, even if you know in advance exactly what he's going to say.