Rebels recall thumping at hands of USC

Steve Guiremand

Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2003 | 10:13 a.m.

Just call UNLV basketball coach Charlie Spoonhour a glutton for punishment.

As part of preparing the Rebels (3-1) for Wednesday night's game at USC (1-1), Spoonhour pulled out a video of last year's embarrassing 98-73 loss to the Trojans at the Thomas & Mack and watched it. Twice.

"I swore I'd never look at it again," Spoonhour said of the 34-turnover debacle that will go down as one of the worst home losses in Rebels history. "But I've reneged now and looked at it twice."

Did Spoonhour get anything out of watching the tape?

"No, there's nothing positive to be gained when you get beat like that," he said before practice Monday afternoon at the Cox Pavilion.

The good news is that only two current Rebels, starting guard Demetrius Hunter and starting forward James Peters, played in the debacle. A third player who started in that contest, center J.K. Edwards, remains suspended until next week for his part in the school's Phonegate probe.

As one might understand, both Peters and Hunter would prefer to look ahead and not behind.

"I've tried to forget about it," Peters, who had eight turnovers to go along with nine points and six rebounds that afternoon, said.

"They just took the ball from us like we weren't there," Hunter, who had 12 points and just two turnovers in 15 minutes of action, said. "I remember sitting there on the bench and they just kept stealing the ball from us. They just embarrassed us at home."

The 34 turnovers are believed to be a school record although UNLV records on the statistic are incomplete.

"We made a lot of mental mistakes, mistakes we shouldn't have made," Peters said. "We've just got to go out with a better mindset and not make the big mistakes or it will be the same thing it was last year."

Spoonhour said that after looking at the tape he was surprised to find out that UNLV actually held a 22-19 lead about nine minutes into the game.

"I thought we were behind the whole way but we weren't," he said.

Then star point guard Marcus Banks went to the bench and the Rebels turnovers and Trojans dunks seemed to come in waves against USC's press.

Even when Banks returned the Rebels couldn't stop the momentum or the turnovers. Banks tied Peters with a team-high eight turnovers.

"It was an uncommonly poor day for Marcus," Spoonhour said. "Some of that was from players not going to meet passes. But there was enough blame to go around for everybody that game from the coaches to the players. (USC) played pretty well and we played very poorly. It was a bad combination."

"That was just one of those games you just try and get out of your system," Hunter said. "We played terrible that game. Now we have to go down and play against them again and hopefully learn from our mistakes."

The reason? The tunnel between the team's locker room and the practice facility was covered with about eight inches of dirt as the Thomas & Mack Center is transformed for the National Finals Rodeo.

The good news is that the carpet covered just dirt and not any of the "trinkets" that will likely be dumped on the area during the next two weeks.