Columnist Dean Juipe: Lady Rebels inch toward spot in poll

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2002 | 9:33 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.

The standard is a simple one. Be ranked among the top 25 in the weekly Associated Press poll and you can call yourself a success.

Some schools in some sports are there all the time.

But for UNLV and its women's basketball program, it has been almost eight full years since it last made an appearance in the poll. It was Jan. 18, 1994, to be exact, and that season was also the last one in which the Lady Rebels advanced to the NCAA Tournament.

Yet head coach Regina Miller and her team are close to doing both again. In this week's AP poll the Lady Rebels are, once again, out of the top 25 but among the "Others receiving votes." To be precise, they're No. 36.

They're also looking like an NCAA Tournament team, owning a 10-1 record going into tonight's game against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi at the Cox Pavilion.

With that record, plus a heralded all-American in Linda Frohlich and an emerging star in Constance Jinks and better-than-average depth, it can be argued the Lady Rebels should already be in the top 25. In fact, Miller will make that argument herself.

"I'm going to start doing a lot more lobbying," she said. "Maybe I need to pick up the phone and make some calls, and let people know they should watch us play."

To hear her tell it, she won't sit by idly.

"It starts with Sports Information," she said of a department that exists at every university and is there, in part, to promote its school's athletic achievements. "I need to talk with them about what needs to be done. A lot of (voters) may know Linda Frohlich but not many know Constance Jinks.

"We may need to do a better job of getting the word out."

Of course there is the matter of UNLV's schedule working against it. While the Lady Rebels have wins over top-flight teams such as San Francisco and UC Santa Barbara, the bulk of their nonconference opponents have been from the sport's nether regions.

Too many Eastern Washingtons, Tennessee-Martins and A&M-Corpus Christis may have pollsters believing the Lady Rebels have fattened their impressive record at the expense of these lesser teams.

"I understand that," Miller said, "and it could be a factor. But our conference is ranked sixth of 32 in women's basketball this season and we know every Mountain West game is going to be a battle.

"Maybe we could schedule more teams that might fall within the top 50 to top 100, but with the conference being so tough you want to take it a little easy when you can. Besides, if this was four years ago, UNLV was losing to these same teams or maybe only beating them by a point or two."

This is Miller's fourth season and her 63-34 record speaks for itself. Despite a rigid budget that limits recruiting, she fields a competitive team and is said to have a couple of standout players already signed for next season.

But it's this year's team that should pique the community's interest, and a spot in the AP or USA Today poll would bring some badly needed attention to it. And if it takes an important game in a hostile environment and on national TV to do it, the Lady Rebels will have that opportunity Sunday when they play at New Mexico and on ESPN2.

By then, a spot in the top 25 is apt to be among the stakes.