Columnist Steve Addy: Recruits needn’t be ready-made

Steve Addy

Wednesday, May 29, 2002 | 9:04 a.m.

Steve Addy covers college basketball for the Las Vegas Sun. Reach him at addy@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4087.

In less than a month, July 22-26, the Big-Time Tournament will make its annual appearance here, and the town will be awash with college basketball coaches here to examine the best prep prospects in the country.

All they can do is look, NCAA rules say. Contact with players is prohibited, even "accidental" bumps in the hallway. Mostly it's one more chance for Mike Krzyzewski, Bill Self, Kelvin Sampson and Tom Izzo to see -- and be seen by -- potential signees, up-close and personal.

To a 16-year-old with stars in his eyes, spotting a blue-bedecked Coach K in the bleachers at Green Valley High -- "He's here to watch ME!" -- is the thrill of a lifetime. As wordless sales pitches go, it's a beauty.

Rebels coach Charlie Spoonhour and his assistants also will be making the rounds, getting a jump on the 2003 recruiting class. With five new scholarships to award, it will be the most important class of the staff's tenure.

His first two classes have been devoted to plugging gaps that weren't of his making, so he gets a free pass, even if the results have been mixed.

After his late hire last year, Spoonhour talked Marcus Banks and Ernest Turner into honoring their letters-of-intent signed under Bill Bayno. Then he had to hurry to sign Lou Amundson, Lamar Bigby and Jamal Holden. Amundson's a keeper. Bigby is a fine athlete but limited contributor. Holden lasted two months before his transfer request was welcomed.

Among next season's incomers, we can already presume success for transfer guard Demetrius Hunter, who proved his value in two seasons as a Georgetown starter. As long as he can scrape off the rust after heel surgery and a year on the sidelines, he's a terrific pickup.

As for the other guys, 6-foot-8 Juco forwards James Peters and J.K. Edwards, I've heard good things and some not-so-good things. I prefer to wait and trust my own eyes, not the opinions of self-styled recruiting "gurus" bearing dubious credentials and hidden agendas.

But regardless if Peters and Edwards are as advertised, and no matter who UNLV birddogs at the Big-Time Tournament, I sense that recruiting won't be as vital to Spoonhour's Rebels as it was to Bayno's. UNLV needs all the talent it can gather, sure, but Spoonhour has already shown he can succeed quite nicely without competing with Duke for players.

Under Bayno, rightly or wrongly, there was an opposite perception. The general idea was that players weren't bound to improve significantly on his watch and if they didn't arrive virtually ready-made, their potential probably wouldn't be maximized.

All I heard after coming here in 2000 was that Bayno didn't fully exploit Shawn Marion's talent -- that seems so -- and Kaspars Kambala wasn't much better as a senior than as a freshman. Bayno loyalists dispute such talk, but the perception remains.

Regardless of that, with Spoonhour in control, Rebels signees need not arrive as finished products or have AAU resumes as long as their baggy shorts. Useful instruction in practice, game-night coaching and playing within a proven system will be the touchstones of his UNLV teams.

Yes, it would be great if the Rebels could bat their eyes at McDonald's All-Americans and get them to come here, but that has never been UNLV's bread and butter (Lamar Odom doesn't count). This is a program that must be, and apparently will be, built with hard-working, above-average players who accept coaching as readily as they run, dunk and rebound.