Columnist Ron Kantowski: Shocker: Spoonhour a good fit

Thursday, March 29, 2001 | 11:03 a.m.

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

In the latest installment of Ripley's Believe It Or Not, UNLV called a news conference today to announce Charlie Spoonhour as its new men's basketball coach. In trying to come up with an analogy to characterize this long-awaited development on short notice, this is the best I could do:

It was getting late, and Saks and Neiman Marcus were closed. But just when the Rebels had given up on finding something nice to wear off the racks at T-J Maxx or Ross Dress for Less, they found a Ralph Lauren shirt concealed among all those off-brands with the frayed stitching.

It was last season's design, to be sure. But otherwise, it was unblemished. Not a stain on it. And when UNLV tried it on, it was a good fit. In fact, it was darn near tailor-made.

And that's something I never thought I would be saying today in this space, given the roundabout path the Rebels took in finally finding their man.

Do I think Carol Harter and Charlie Cavagnaro got lucky? You better believe it. But if Charlie Spoonhour coaches the Rebels back to basketball prominence -- and given his track record, you'd have to give him the benefit of the doubt -- the UNLV athletic administration will come out of this one smelling like ... well, if not a rose, then certainly no worse than your old man's after-shave lotion.

In fact, there's going to be a lot of Old Spice roaming the halls at the UNLV coaching offices. Down one corridor, you'll find 65-year-old football coach John Robinson. Anchoring the other will be the 61-year-old Spoonhour.

And that's just the way Cavagnaro wants it. Between the athletic director and his revenue coaches, there's enough gray hair within the department to challenge the Grecian Formula folks for years. But give Cavagnaro at least a little credit for sticking to his game plan. Almost from the start, he indicated he wanted a John Robinson clone to coach the basketball team, and that's exactly what he got.

Personally, once it become apparent that most of the big-name coaches considered the Rebels' job no more than a bargain basement opportunity, I was hoping UNLV would bring in an up-and-coming guy, a proven winner at a mid-major conference.

At least Spoonhoour fits half of that description. Anybody who can take a directional school to the Big Dance five times (which is what Spoonhour did at Southwest Missouri State) and then do it three more times at Saint Louis University (which hadn't been seen or heard from since Bob Petit was launching one-handed set shots from 20 feet) knows how to coach.

In fact, Spoonhour left the Southwest Missouri program in such good shape that his successor used a stopover in Springfield as a springboard to the big time. Does the name Steve Alford ring a bell?

One of the raps against the defensive-minded Spoonhour making the rounds on the Internet chat groups is that he has been involved in too many 55-51 games to suit the run-and-gun mind-set of Rebel fans. But that only was true when he didn't have the personnel to pump up the volume.

A lot of Rebel fans may be lukewarm on Spoonhour, but here's the bottom line as inscribed in stone in Madison, Wis., last spring: As long as UNLV has the 55 and the other guys have the 51, nobody is going to complain too loudly.