Columnist Dean Juipe: UNLV hires another loser from far away

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, April 8, 1998 | 11:09 a.m.

THIS WILL come as little consolation to LaDonna McClain, who resigned as head coach of the Lady Rebels basketball team in February under pressure and in tears. She and her husband, Andy, have since departed Las Vegas and returned to Murfreesboro, Tenn., where she's student teaching.

But LaDonna, get this: UNLV may as well have kept you. Given the shaky qualifications of the woman hired to replace you and the fact UNLV graciously agreed to pay you $65,000 to not coach the Lady Rebels next season, the school may have been better off crossing its fingers and keeping you on.

What an unbelievable disappointment for a program desperate for revitalization. To replace McClain, who came here from Austin Peay with an unimpressive career record of 60-103, Regina Miller arrives from Western Illinois with an almost identical 60-100 mark.

She signed a three-year contract Tuesday that will pay her $85,000 per year.

It doesn't matter that Miller is nice and enthusiastic -- so was McClain. What matters is that UNLV, once again, passed on applicants who at least had some local name recognition and who may have been able to get the job done, and, instead, hired someone from a small school far away who has a very poor coaching record.

When quizzed on the merits of such a choice, UNLV Athletic Director Charlie Cavagnaro said "it's in the eyes of the beholder. Some people will always be disappointed in situations like this."

Excluding Miller and those responsible for bringing her here, it's entirely possible everyone else who gives a whit is disappointed with this decision. As one athletic-department member admitted, "we expect to take some heat on this."

Well, here it is: At a time when the Lady Rebels are preparing to move into the Thomas & Mack Center and therefore need to improve their cash flow as well as their victory total, UNLV has hired a person who looks suspiciously like the second coming of McClain. And, predictably, McClain failed, going 4-23 and 3-17 before succumbing to the pressure.

"Maybe you could say that," Cavagnaro replied when asked if the incoming Miller looks a little too similar to the outgoing McClain, "but I don't think that's fair."

Before hiring McClain in 1996, UNLV passed on a coach of almost legendary status, Marianne Stanley. This time UNLV passed on the Lady Rebels' all-time greatest player, Misty Thomas, as well as a former UNLV men's and women's assistant, Howie Landa, as well as an assistant from Hawaii's excellent program, George Wolfe, as well as the man who served as McClain's interim replacement, Steve Corraro. On the surface, any of those choices would have been wiser than going with Miller, whose claim to fame is that she once played on a Final Four team and that she was once a graduate assistant for another Final Four team.

Sorry, that just isn't going to turn too many heads in Las Vegas.

Besides, Miller's West Coast contacts are sketchy and she knows nothing at all about the Western Athletic Conference in which UNLV plays. In fact, her background is so far removed from Nevada that she even mispronounces the name of the state.