Columnist Dean Juipe: Program has lost its luster

Dean Juipe

Monday, March 20, 2000 | 10:06 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.

The glory days are gone, just as many have suspected.

But here's the disturbing part, which really didn't hit home until seeing the UNLV men's basketball team so unceremoniously bounced from the NCAA Tournament: They're not coming back.

The school has had its basketball heyday and it would be pure folly to believe there will ever be an encore to match the program's successes of the late 1970s through the early 1990s. While the lure of playing for the run-and-gun Rebels in front of rabid fans in Sin City helped propel the program into the nation's elite, UNLV is no longer appealing to players of that high caliber.

There's no getting around it: While many in the community have held out hope of a legitimate basketball resurgence, it simply isn't going to happen.

Talent and coaching decide games and the Rebels may be average, or slightly above, in both. If you've been watching the ongoing NCAA tourney you may have already made the mental comparisons: UNLV's players are substandard when matched against the nation's best.

That's no disgrace, as only a very few schools traditionally vie for the national championship. But there was a time when UNLV was among those schools, and now, after years of only moderate success, it's undeniable that the program has lost its luster.

It was no consolation Sunday when three of UNLV's recent tormenters, Tulsa, North Carolina and Oklahoma State, advanced to the Sweet 16. Tulsa, which ousted the Rebels Friday in a one-sided opening game in Nashville, moved on at the expense of a Cincinnati team that had beaten UNLV by a ghastly 40 points in January; North Carolina, which defeated UNLV by 24 points in December, redeemed its season by sending Stanford home early; and Oklahoma State, 14 points better than UNLV in December, sent Pepperdine packing.

The Rebels were not only not good enough to defeat those fine teams, they weren't good enough to even hang with them. And that reality is something of a slap in the face to Las Vegans who once cherished having a superior team.

Even allowing that newcomer Lou Kelly was initially ineligible and then injured throughout the season, this season's UNLV team wasn't going to be anything special. The fact that the Rebels won the Mountain West Conference title was marginally encouraging, yet, in retrospect, it meant little and it may only have been an offshoot of Utah not having its usual intimidating team.

For those fans -- and his pals in the media -- who fawned over Mark Dickel, be glad the Rebels never faced a team that applied any serious defensive pressure, or Dickel's shortcomings would have been apparent long before the Tulsa game. Credit Dickel with playing hard, but he's no NBA point guard.

Nor is Kaspars Kambala showing NBA ability, although he certainly has the potential. But his disappearing acts in big games -- his stats vs. the Golden Hurricane seem OK until you realize he rang them up long after the outcome was decided -- have haunted his reputation.

The Rebels finished 23-8 this season, and in some circles that's acceptable.

But, by the looks of things, they will always strive to go 23-8 and may never get past the first round of the NCAA Tournament.