Columnist Dean Juipe: Amundson has no need to redshirt

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2002 | 9:14 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

It's a practice the NCAA allows yet one that isn't always in the best interest of the athlete.

It's known as redshirting, and oftentimes a coach forces it upon a player he feels he can do without for a season. The tradeoff, in theory, is that the player will return a year later bigger, stronger, more mature, and, as a result, of greater value to his team.

But there's a twist to the usual scenario going on at UNLV. Lou Amundson, a sophomore forward on the men's basketball team, has told coach Charlie Spoonhour that he might want to redshirt rather than play this season.

Spoonhour doesn't favor that course of action -- and neither will the team's fans.

"We've only got 10 scholarship players playing this year, so common sense tells you I'm not forcing anything (such as redshirting) on anybody," Spoonhour said Monday. "I'm more or less leaving this to the player and I've got a lot of latitude, but you never know what people are thinking.

"We haven't sat down and talked about it yet, but we will and that's when I'll explain it to him."

As we talked, it dawned on Spoonhour that he had better arrange this all-important meeting with Amundson fairly soon.

"A decision has to be made prior to the first exhibition game, so, in truth, time is winding down and it's getting pretty close," Spoonhour said.

The Rebels, who have their annual Fan Jam scheduled for Wednesday night in the Thomas & Mack Center, will play Global Sports in an exhibition game Nov. 6. If Amundson wants to redshirt, the decision will have to be made by then.

Fans will think he's crazy if he does.

While not a prolific scorer, Amundson played in 30 games for the Rebels last season as a true freshman and averaged 2.8 points and 2.3 rebounds. But at 6-foot-7 and a solid 205 pounds, he provided some bulk underneath and occasionally flashed a scorer's touch when he got the minutes.

Not yet 20 years old, he could develop into a decent player. And the team's fans, as well as Spoonhour himself, would prefer to see that development sooner rather than later.

What got Amundson thinking about skipping a season was a staph infection that lodged in a foot this past summer. It caused the Colorado native to be hospitalized and placed on an IV, and the layoff made him feel he had fallen behind in his conditioning.

But Spoonhour not only hasn't seen any evidence of Amundson having conditioning issues, he added that Amundson never looked better than he did this past Saturday in practice.

"He's fully recovered," Spoonhour said. "He did a good job for us last season and he's spent his time so far in this camp working on his ball handling and shooting."

Having only seen a single line in print on Amundson and the possibility of his redshirting, it came as a relief to hear Spoonhour say he wanted the player on his roster this season. Redshirting works for some players and some programs, but it isn't something UNLV needs to be doing at the present time and with this particular player.

Luckily, Spoonhour sees it the same way.

So come on Lou, it looks like everyone wants to see you play.