Columnist Ron Kantowski: TV station blew it on Pitino

Tuesday, March 6, 2001 | 10:41 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's column usually appears Thursday. Reach him at259-4088 or ron@ lasvegassun.com.

Attention Channel 8: The next UNLV basketball coach will not be Red Auerbach (too old), John Wooden (too revered) or Adolph Rupp (too dead). Check it out with your "reliable" sources.

The only thing more shameless than UNLV's pursuit of Slick Rick Pitino to become the Rebels' next basketball coach was the way Crazy 8's Dave "Done Deal" McCann covered the story. And then, when the deal unraveled like Maryland with a 10-point lead, Channel 8 had the audacity to claim it was first to break the story that Pitino was not coming.

But McCann and company weren't the only ones who wound up with Pitino pie all over their mugs.

For starters, there's UNLV president Carol Harter and athletic director Charlie Cavagnaro, who will be blamed for everything from the Lindbergh Kidnapping to global bench warming because they couldn't close the Pitino deal. But if they are guilty of anything, it's of letting Pitino pull their collective leg until a better opportunity -- read: any opportunity this side of Rhode Island -- developed.

Obviously, Cavagnaro is not one of those ADs who feels threatened by a football or basketball coach with a bigger name than his (witness: John Robinson), so he probably saw the courting of Pitino as a quick fix to balancing his athletic budget. The legacy that could have been his -- hiring both Robinson and Pitino under his watch -- would have made a lot of Rebel fans forget all about Brad Rothermel, the most popular of his predecessors.

Only Rothermel wouldn't have made the mistake of running off Bill Bayno in the middle of the season, leaving the "interim" tag off Max Good's new title as head coach and alienating Rebels players by being party to the very public Pitino negotiations.

As for Harter, you can understand why she wanted Pitino as her coach -- he's infinitely more kissable than say, John Chaney. One of these days, Harter is going to realize that her place is not at center court, planting smooches on Rebels players who, truth be known, probably can't stand her intrusions into their business.

Yet -- and here's an upset -- I'm willing to cut C&C a little slack over the courtship of Slick Rick if they only were trying to make their constituents happy campers and/or scholarship donors.

Now that Pitino's not coming (as if he ever was), there's still an outside chance that UNLV's meddling boosters will cease feigning interest in the program. If the guys with the fat wallets wonder why Rebel players will have to buy a ticket to this week's Mountain West tournament, they should look in the mirror.

Then there's Bayno. Just when he was starting to look like a sympathetic figure in this sordid little affair, the deposed coach acted like a buffoon on Saturday night. After Trevor Diggs dropped 49 points on Wyoming, Bayno was spotted jumping over the scorer's table like some face-painted frat boy looking to get on TV.

Can you imagine John Wooden in the middle of the court, jumping up and down, to celebrate a win with his former players? No, and I can't imagine Max Good doing that, either.

Regardless of what you think of his coaching abilities, it is Good and only Good who has risen above the Pitino morass. He has brought some much-needed dignity to a program that seems to have totally forsaken it in pursuit of the almighty buck.

Sorry fans, but that's the only done deal that I am aware of.