Columnist Dean Juipe: Will Bayno call Tark for advice?

Dean Juipe

Monday, March 13, 2000 | 10:11 a.m.

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

They don't exchange phone calls or e-mails, nor do they send each other greeting cards or love notes.

No, Bill Bayno and Jerry Tarkanian aren't particularly close. Oh, they're cordial enough when the situation requires their presence at a common site, but the current UNLV men's basketball coach and his illustrious predecessor prefer a businesslike tone to their personal relationship.

They keep a little distance between themselves.

But maybe Bayno should give Tark a call this week.

In fact, he'd be crazy not to, given that Tarkanian has some information that would have to benefit Bayno and his Rebels.

Tark, you see, knows what it takes to beat Tulsa, which, coincidentally, is the team the Rebels will face in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Three times this season Tarkanian's Fresno State Bulldogs defeated the 14th-ranked Golden Hurricane.

Tulsa went 29-1 against the rest of the world.

Of course Bayno may feel he already has enough information at hand, what with the Rebels having beaten Tulsa twice during the 1998-99 season.

"But last year means nothing," Bayno said of the 73-55 and 54-53 games that went the Rebels' way. "They're a better team than they were last year."

So is UNLV.

And the Rebels are back in the Big Dance for the second time in three seasons and for the 18th time since the program was founded in 1958. That's their reward for sweeping through this past weekend's Mountain West Conference tournament and finishing the regular season 23-7 in spite of two very bad losses and a less-than-sterling schedule.

But the NCAA did UNLV no favors, making the Rebels a No. 10 seed and placing them in a sub-regional with dynamos like Cincinnati and Ohio State.

Oh, well. As Bayno says, "You don't play any bad teams" in the NCAA Tournament.

Tulsa may be among the most peculiar teams in the event, however, given its repetitive stumbles against Fresno. That has to be a good omen for UNLV, which plays an up-tempo style that's marginally similar to the Bulldogs.

Tulsa, the No. 7 seed in the South regional, is also 1-5 against UNLV teams of years past.

Weighing these particulars, a UNLV victory Friday in Nashville is hardly out of the question and Las Vegans will be expecting the best. The Rebels have seven consecutive wins and the positive momentum of being the Mountain West's first basketball champion.

With a sigh of relief and congratulatory pats on the back, the players reacted to Sunday's bracketing in the predictable manner. They were a happy bunch in the Thomas & Mack Center's Si Redd Room, finally able to forget those 40- and 24-point losses earlier in the season to Cincinnati and North Carolina, and finally able to dismiss criticisms of a soft schedule that ranked No. 152 in the nation.

"They really want the teams that are playing the best basketball," Bayno said of the Selection Committee rightfully making the red-hot Rebels a part of March Madness.

It wasn't a formality, but UNLV is in.

This isn't a formality either, but the next step is for Bayno, or an intermediary, to place a call to Fresno. It's (559) 278-2644, in case they need help.