Columnist Dean Juipe: Spoonhour gets his excuses in order

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2003 | 10:08 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 road trip that's being sold to the players and fans as a tedious, demanding excursion that no properly managed team should have to tolerate or endure.

The Montreal Expos giving up 20 home games to play in Puerto Rico?

The Las Vegas Wranglers playing seven times in 15 nights on a swing through the frigid portion of the East Coast Hockey League?

The Cameroon national soccer team on a bus trip to Burma?

Nah, it's the UNLV men's basketball team, booted out of its home facility by the annual invasion of the National Finals Rodeo, forced to play three games spread across 11 days in nearby and fairly hospitable California.

Sounds like a vacation to me, but head coach Charlie Spoonhour doesn't see it as such and has complained that the timing is lousy, the experience is apt to be miserable and the NFR should find a new home.

Bah humbug, would be a timely response.

Game 1 of the Rebels' supposed road trip to hell is tonight in Los Angeles with Southern California, Game 2 is Saturday at Loyola Marymount and Game 3 is Dec. 13 at Stanford. The Rebels will return to Las Vegas after each game, which will cut into their sightseeing while allowing the players to take their final exams on campus.

They do, of course, have tutors and academic counselors, which should ease their burden during this exhausting time.

If only the Expos, Wranglers and Cameroonians were treated so well.

Saying things such as "it affects our opportunity to be successful" and "you never get used to it," Spoonhour has used a discolored brush to paint a stilted picture of what lies ahead while the Thomas & Mack Center is otherwise occupied. He is acting as if six trips to a neighboring state are something to dread.

Yes, he's getting old (64) but this can't be senility creeping in to Spoonhour's rationalizations. I'd say it's something more akin to gamesmanship.

He's looking for his 3-1 team to bond, to pull together, to use these upcoming road games as a way to gain cohesiveness. And he's doing it by playing off the familiar and overworked "It's us vs. them" pleadings that any number of teams and coaches utilize when things veer slightly from the comfort of normal.

Further, by voicing his complaints beforehand and in a public forum, Spoonhour lowers fans' expectations while reminding anyone who will listen that UNLV basketball coaches annually wish the rodeo was back in Oklahoma City. But it's here for 10 days every December and will be through at least 2008, thereby reducing Spoonhour's complaint to meaningless bluster, if not sour grapes.

I think he knows his team, if it plays well, could conceivably win all three games in California. USC creamed the Rebels last year but finished with a losing record; Marymount lost 20 of 31 games a season ago; and Stanford will be tough but maybe not as formidable as some of its muscled teams of the recent past.

If the Rebels finish the sojourn 3-0 or even 2-1, a few extra tickets will be sold for the five consecutive home games that will follow and the slumbering start to the current season will give way to a new round of excitement even if the opponents are sometimes no better or more attractive than Occidental. Maybe, Spoonhour must be saying to himself, if we do well in California perhaps it will take more than an empty can of Pepsi for a fan to get a seat at the Mack for a UNLV basketball game.

But if his team comes back without a win or maybe 1-2, he's already off the hook. He has made his case and the excuses are bolted in place.

It'll be the rodeo's fault.