Columnist Dean Juipe: Rebels find losing is contagious

Dean Juipe

Monday, March 27, 2000 | 10:46 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.

Facts don't lie and the fact of the matter is that the current UNLV baseball team may be the worst in the school's history.

After Sunday's 3-2 loss to New Mexico on a beautiful afternoon at Wilson Stadium, the Rebels are 7-24 with 24 games to play.

That .225 winning percentage puts the Rebels very much on course to fall beneath the program's previous lowest percentage, .358 in 1974 when the team won a mere 19 of 53 games.

This year's team will have to win more than half of its remaining games in order to avoid a distinction it would rather do without.

Given these wretched numbers and unfavorable prospects, you would think the team would be pathetic. After all, the Rebels were picked for second in the Mountain West Conference but are dead last in a league that isn't known for its baseball prowess.

Yet, for this one day at least, they actually didn't look that bad.

"We really don't believe we can win," head coach Rod Soesbe lamented. "We don't have any confidence.

"Just like winning is contagious, losing kind of is too."

UNLV has been beaten every way possible this season, statistically by an average of two runs but realistically by getting pummeled, hammered and overwhelmed by the majority of its opponents. Yet the one-run losses hurt as much or more than any, and the Rebels are a mere 1-7 in those could-go-either-way games.

They're 0-9 in the Mountain West and looking to salvage a season that has prompted notes of discord in the community.

"I can't blame them," Soesbe said of those who are dissatisfied with his team. "We haven't played well enough to encourage anyone to come out and see us."

Yet for the series finale with New Mexico the stands were neither disserted nor dour, although skeptics would counter that the 402 paid fans were enjoying the weather as much as the ball game.

The usual excuses for a losing season -- inexperience and/or injuries -- really don't apply to the Rebels, who had four seniors at the top of their lineup.

"We're not as offensively gifted as we were in the past," Soesbe said. "We just don't have the power we once did."

In recent years, if not forever, the typical UNLV team bashed the ball around the park and won or lost 14-10. But this team is losing by an average score of 7-5, and its .950 fielding percentage only accentuates its lack of muscle.

Soesbe has toyed a bit with the lineup, shelving "some of the older kids we were counting on who haven't taken charge like we needed."

He isn't happy and there's talk among those who see the team regularly that Soesbe would dump a handful of his scholarship players this summer if the university would permit it.

As for the here and now, he says "we're not quitting just yet" and the effort was satisfactory Sunday.

But it was a loss. Another loss. The 13th in 15 games.

The numbers keep adding up and they're all in the wrong column as far as the Rebels are concerned.

If the trend continues there won't be any getting around it: In 34 years of baseball, UNLV has never had a worse team.