Columnist Steve Carp: Bayno keeps a watch for banana peels

Steve Carp

Thursday, Aug. 20, 1998 | 9:48 a.m.

THAT WAS A PRETTY nifty tan Bill Bayno was sporting the other day.

Of course, when you spend your summer in Tahiti, Italy, the Carribean and Hawaii, you're not going to come back with a pasty look. Besides, the UNLV basketball coach figured he's entitled to some sunshine, given what his team accomplished last season.

Of course, there's nothing like a few prying questions from a nosy reporter to cloud up a coach's sunny day. But things appear to be going so well that even asking about Greedy Daniels' status wasn't going to damper Bayno's disposition.

"How about those Yankees? Are they incredible or what?" he said.

Yeah, incredible. So how about Greedy? Is he a combo guard, a point guard, or what?

If there's one thing Bayno has learned in his three years in Las Vegas, it's that basketball doesn't take a holiday. The fans here always want to know what's up with the Rebels.

So chew on this, people. For now, Daniels is going back to the point exclusively. Mark Dickel remains the starter. Shawn Marion may be hailed as the best recruit since Larry Johnson, and Bayno accepts that. He also warns not to heap too much pressure on the 6-7 JC standout too soon. For as he astutely points out, "Larry struggled the first half of his first season (at UNLV)."

You should also be relieved to know that no one is suspended. No one took a trip provided by a sports agent. Everyone's academically eligible with the exception of center Javares Anderson, who left the program late in the spring. Right now, everyone's healthy. Recruiting is going well.

So Bayno has a right to be optimistic. And he should, given his team last year parlayed 10 very good days of basketball into a trip to the NCAA Tournament and came away with a 20-13 record after flirting with the .500 mark going into February.

He should also feel good with the knowledge that he learned an important lesson along the way last year, that being you can't please everyone all the time. By taking a crash course in chemistry, he settled on an eight-man rotation that was willing to share the basketball, play team defense and work hard.

"How good we can be depends on how close we come to duplicating the chemistry of the eight guys last year," he said of the 1998-99 Rebels.

Marion should fit in, even if it takes him a few weeks to do so. If he's good enough to be on the Goodwill Games team -- and by all rights, he should have been -- he should have little problem working with Kevin Simmons, Kaspars Kambala, Donovan Stewart, Brian Keefe and Dickel.

Kambala, Daniels and Issiah Epps have spent the summer working on their games. Ditto Dickel, who went back to New Zealand for the summer to play on his country's national team. Throw freshmen Chris Richardson and Desmond Herod into the mix, and it's understandable why Bayno feels good.

But while it's OK to feel good about the future, just remember where this program was a scant seven months ago -- .500 with internal problems, little chemistry and struggling to find itself.

A step backwards is only a banana peel away.