Columnist Dean Juipe: UNLV coach proves she can do it

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2000 | 10:42 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

When Regina Miller was introduced as the UNLV women's basketball coach 2 1/2 years ago, it was virtually impossible to look past her 60-100 record at Western Illinois.

It didn't help that she made a common mistake and mispronounced the name of the very state where she was coming to work, Nevada.

The thought that came to mind is easy to recall: What was UNLV thinking?

Today, in retrospect, it's amusing if not laughable. This woman who many of us were so unsure of, is, instead, looking very successful after her first two teams went 17-11 and 17-12, respectively, and her current team is 6-1 heading into a game with Cal State Northridge tonight at the Thomas & Mack Center.

The UNLV men's program may be suffocating with problems but its women are doing just fine.

"I guess I can say 'We've come a long way, baby,' " Miller said of the turnaround of the Lady Rebels, as well as the change in perception toward her. "But there's still a long way to go."

Don't forget where the Lady Rebels were before Miller arrived in 1998. In the three seasons that preceded her appointment, UNLV was 4-23, 4-23 and 4-21.

Those were desperate times.

"The program lacked spirit and it lacked a winning attitude," Miller said. "It was down, and I had to assess what we needed. My main focus was to modify our attitude and change the focus from losing to winning."

Consider it done.

The current Lady Rebels are on pace for an excellent season, one that could lead to the program's first appearance in the NCAA Tournament since 1994. The Mountain West has some decent women's teams -- UNLV may be no better than fourth -- yet the Lady Rebels are, at least, upwardly mobile.

As such, Miller reflects that theme with a bright and cheerful personality she didn't seem to exhibit on the day she made her Las Vegas debut.

"I take pride in being a Lady Rebel," she said. "This is an awesome place to be. And I've also learned the importance of saying 'Nevada' the way it's supposed to be."

She laughs, in part at her rookie mistake and in part because she's able to correct it while in the presence of friends and former critics alike. She has everything going in the right direction.

"We're probably ahead of where I thought we'd be," she replied when asked if she could have envisioned her team(s) doing this well only three seasons into her reign. "You probably think we're ahead of where we'd be, too."

Had the latter remark been asked as a question, almost anyone would have to respond with a nod of agreement. Truth is, many of us suspected Miller was in so far over her head at UNLV that she wasn't apt to survive.

"I wasn't uneasy when I first came here, but I probably kept a lot in," she said. The converse is true today, as she exuberantly fine tunes the system she already has in place.

"I'm always challenging the team," she said. "I tell them, 'We're on the right track, but if we just sit where we are we'll get run over.' "

She's speaking with confidence, her pratfalls and dissenters behind her. She's speaking as someone who has exceeded expectations.