Columnist Ron Kantowski: All-Star game has local entry

Thursday, Feb. 10, 2000 | 9:41 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday and Thursday. Reach him at ron@vegas.com or 259-4088.

Larry Johnson wasn't even nominated for this year's NBA All-Star game but that doesn't mean Las Vegas won't be represented in the annual 5-on-5 pickup game which tips off Sunday afternoon in Oakland.

If you'll look closely -- and have X-ray vision like Superman -- you'll notice the guy in the horse suit looks a lot like Dallas Davidson of Las Vegas.

That's because it is Dallas Davidson of Las Vegas -- a k a, Bucky the Bronco, the horse-faced mascot of Santa Clara University.

"He is the Kurt Warner of college basketball mascots," said Davidson's father Dale, who works as a sales trainee in the marketing department at Southwest Gas, with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek.

"Just three weeks ago, he was making his meager existence by stocking shelves at the university bookstore, deprived of sporting glory. Now he's an all-star."

Dallas Davidson, a senior English major at Santa Clara, only recently agreed to become a horse's face when the co-ed who used to be Bucky, citing the foul-smelling costume, suddenly quit.

Davidson told the Santa Clara athletic department that if somebody dry cleaned Bucky's suit and sprayed Glade in it, he would do it.

According to his father, Dallas is "wonderfully lanky and barely coordinated in his costume." Sounds a lot like Will Perdue.

Whereas the specialty of the Phoenix Suns Gorilla is slam dunking off a trampoline, the younger Davidson has perfected what his father calls "a graceless cartwheel."

Dale Davidson said his son only has been performing in the guise of Bucky for three games. During one of them, he used his new identity to make time with an old girlfriend (she didn't recognize her former beau's hoof prints) before nearly collapsing from heat exhaustion.

The Phillie Phanatic could definitely relate.

It's not certain whether Dallas Davidson aspires to be the game's next famous furball. But with a name like his, he could always be a baseball umpire if being Bucky starts to get old and smelly again.

* GOING DANCING? Bill Bayno and his UNLV players won't want to read the following item, but there's at least one so-called expert who believes UNLV would be invited to the NCAA men's basketball tournament if the season ended today.

ESPN.com, in its weekly projection of the NCAA Tournament field, has UNLV among its "Last Four In" category this week. It lists the Rebels as an 11 seed, traveling to Minneapolis to face sixth-seeded Missouri in a Midwest Region first-rounder.

If the season ended today, ESPN projects Stanford (West), Cincinnati (Midwest), Duke (East) and Syracuse (South) as No. 1 seeds. It has Utah as a No. 6 in the West and Jerry Tarkanian's Fresno State bunch as a 10 in the South.

Just the same, there's no need for Rebels fans to buy a parka and brush up on their Prince lyrics just yet.

* EASY WAY OUT: Quote from Brad Gilbert, Andre Agassi's coach, about the prospect of his pupil playing in the Sybase Open in San Jose, Calif., this week:

"After last year (when Agassi cussed up a storm that Dice Clay would be proud of to warrant an early ejection), there is no chance we're not going to be there."

That was last week. On Tuesday, Agassi, citing a royal pain in the um, back, withdrew.

Can't say I blame him this time. After winning the Australian Open and hurling chunks on the baseline with conga drums ringing in his ears during the United States' emotional Davis Cup first-round victory over Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe?) last weekend, Agassi certainly deserves a break -- especially considering that no other player ranked in the top 15 is playing in San Jose.

* AROUND THE HORN: If you see the letters "XFL, WWF OK UPN, TNN" in the next couple of days it will mean that you've just been given an eye exam or that Vince McMahon's new in-your-face football league will have nailed down a television contract. ... The Super Bowl Rams are changing their uniforms next year, going to a lighter blue hue. I'd prefer the old blue-and-white scheme from the Roman Gabriel-Deacon Jones era myself. ... Only 48 percent of the nation's CBS affiliates picked up the option to show the final round of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am Monday afternoon, meaning that as everybody in Tiger Woods' group was watching the birdies, the rest of the country was watching a threesome comprised of Oprah Winfrey, Montel Williams and whatever goofy-looking Wink or Art is reprising Richard Dawson's role on "Family Feud" these days.