Columnist Dean Juipe: Rebels did what they had to do

Dean Juipe

Friday, Dec. 21, 2001 | 9:49 a.m.

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

Every basketball team that controls its own schedule allows itself the luxury of the occasional easy game, where the outcome doesn't seem to be in question and the streamlined goal is to play hard and take something positive out of it.

UNLV had one of those marginally predictable evenings Thursday at the Thomas & Mack Center, and it seemingly made the best of it.

Using a 14-0 run to distance themselves from visiting Nevada-Reno during a particularly inspired segment in the first half, the Rebels came away with an 87-75 victory that took no one by surprise.

But this did: UNLV penetrators so repetitively worked the baseline and dropped a soft pass off to an open teammate in the paint for a bucket that it was as if the team had concocted a specialty dish. Picture it as a souffle, or something, amid a fancy smorgasbord entitled "The baseline feed."

It worked as diagramed so many times it was as if the Rebels were toying with an undermanned opponent -- which, of course, they were.

Reno is not a basketball school per se, not like UNLV once was or how it still prefers to picture itself. Yet just a year ago the Wolf Pack so humiliated the Rebels in an 80-71 shellacking at the Lawlor Events Center that then-coach Bill Bayno was virtually fired by the time the Rebels' plane landed, although the NCAA problems that all but greeted him at McCarran International were also a contributing factor.

But the catalyst in Reno's win last season, Las Vegas resident James Bayless, watched this year's annual game from the stands with his father and some friends. He withdrew from UNR and is in the process of transferring to San Francisco.

Given that he had 24 points off the bench in the game a year ago, the Pack could have used him in a lineup that sorely lacked anyone with these basketball basics: initiative, height and expertise.

If revenge was in the back of the Rebels' minds, they got it at the expense of a team that came into the game 7-2 but had an embarrassing 30-point loss at Arkansas State and another at usually docile Montana.

The Pack's record was a mirage.

UNLV's current mark of 5-3 is not.

The Rebels have the look of a team that may continue to win five of every eight games. They're good but not great, competent yet not overwhelming, and frisky without appearing completely driven.

When their shots are falling, their defensive liabilities are minimal. And when they hold their own on the boards, as they did against Reno, it's a sure thing they're going to win.

That these peripheral factors fell into place pleased but didn't startle the mid-sized crowd that took in the game. Almost to a fan, they arrived at the arena ready to see UNLV sharpen its skills for the bigger and better opponent that's due Saturday, the University of Texas.

Reno was there to be picked apart and the Rebels, appropriately, played the scavenger. They put a game in the win column that had been earmarked for just such a destination.

It was good and the responsive audience left without complaint.

It was a mission accomplished.