Columnist Ron Kantowski: Michigan play: no Gaines

Thursday, Sept. 7, 2000 | 10:36 a.m.

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

OK, so I was wrong.

It was about this time last year that I criticized UNLV basketball coach Bill Bayno for not recruiting Clark High basketball star Kevin Gaines with a little more enthusiasm.

Perhaps Bayno and his staff didn't think Gaines could play (although they would have been wrong, given his 11.7 scoring average as a true freshman at Michigan last season).

Perhaps Gaines' free-wheeling style wasn't a good fit with Bayno's more disciplined scheme (although there always seemed to be loose wheels flying around the Thomas & Mack Center whenever the since-departed Greedy Daniels was in the game).

Or maybe Bayno simply saw the handwriting on the wall -- which in Gaines' case, is turning out to be larger than a billboard on the side of the road.

Which, ironically, is where Gaines' Michigan career came to an end early Monday morning.

Gaines and two Wolverines freshmen were re-enacting a World Wrestling Federation match on the shoulder of a busy Michigan highway -- they actually were wrestling, according to the police report -- when the third man in the ring intervened. But when the referee is wearing one of those Smokey Bear hats and your breath smells like the Stroh's brewery, it's usually not a good thing when you play hoops for a guy charged with cleaning up an outlaw program.

Gaines' blood-alcohol content of .17 was only slightly lower than his rebounding average, and Michigan coach Brian Ellerbe didn't even need a timeout in dealing with the situation.

Gaines probably still had a buzz when Ellerbe kicked him off the team.

That should tell you something. Usually a coach at a major university will walk one of his stars to rehab counseling himself, if it means keeping him in the lineup. Ellerbe, who placed the other two players on probation, didn't even give Gaines a chance to explain himself before demanding that his 6-foot-4 guard turn in his Nikes.

He said Gaines was dismissed for "a culmination of things that I will not elaborate on."

Last November, Gaines and two teammates were investigated for their alleged involvement in the theft of a Palm Pilot from another student. More recently, Gaines got caught riffling through a professor's backpack, apparently looking for more than a passing grade.

Every kid deserves a second chance, and kids who can create off the dribble like Gaines can usually get three or four. So it's not as if the Sun's 1999 Player of the Year is finished -- not when Jerry Tarkanian, Steve Fisher and Billy Tubbs are still employed at Fresno State, San Diego State and TCU, respectively. Then there's always Jim Harrick's program at Georgia. When The Devil goes down there these days, he always finds somebody he can relate to on the Bulldogs' bench.

As for Gaines cleaning up his act at UNLV, don't count on it. NCAA rules prohibit Bayno from commenting on that possibility, but those close to him say he's not that interested.

In sum, Kevin Gaines isn't the first kid to take an incredible amount of talent and throw it out the window. But what is so frustrating to those of us who never had it to begin with is understanding why anybody would want to waste it.