Columnist Ron Kantowski: Was that stench from the rodeo or Rebels?

Friday, Dec. 19, 2003 | 10:30 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

They held the 11th go-round of the National Finals Rodeo at the Thomas & Mack Center Thursday night. Or at least it smelled like it.

And so perhaps it was appropriate that the Rebels got knocked off their high horse.

With the stench of bucking broncs still fouling the air -- or was it UNLV's second-half defense? -- the Rebels managed to lose to Northern Arizona, a dog and pony show from the Big Sky Conference.

In other years, getting chopped down to size by the Lumberjacks wouldn't have been such a disgrace. After all, it was only a year ago, almost to the day, since UCLA got the ax on its home court at Pauley Pavilion. And twice in the past five years, NAU almost pulled off Paul Bunyanesque upsets in the NCAA tournament, having turned its power saw on Cincinnati and St. John's in two more of those maddening No. 2 versus No. 15 seed games.

Had the Rebels taken the time to peruse the flier that serves as the NAU media guide, perhaps they wouldn't have taken the Lumberjacks so lightly.

It's easy to blame them for that now, but nobody around UNLV was taking NAU too seriously. The Lumberjacks had lost five consecutive games to Division I opponents and were seen as such a lightweight draw that anybody who brought an unwrapped toy to the game got in for free.

Mike Adras, the native Las Vegan who succeeded Ben Howland as NAU coach, had teams at Bishop Gorman that could have beaten these Lumberjacks. And in this case, given that Adras coached NBA players such as the late Brian Williams and Matt Othick when they were Gaels, that's not an exaggeration.

Afterward, UNLV coach Charlie Spoonhour said he had reminded the Rebels about NAU's pesky past. He also brought up UC Santa Barbara's upset at UCLA the previous night, which happened at the same time St. Mary's was ringing its bells at Arizona before coming up just short.

"It's not as if this a new thing," Spoonhour said after the upset.

Maybe if he would have brought up Buster Douglas, Chaminade, the '69 Mets, those "Hoosiers" in the movies and the last Minnesota gubernatorial election, he might have gotten the Rebels' attention.

But when the Lumberjacks took the court without their slingshots, UNLV put the rock right between their eyes with a dazzling display of dunks, alley-oop passes and 3-point goals by (insert name of favorite Rebel here).

The Rebels couldn't have played much better during the first eight minutes when they literally didn't miss a shot. As the small crowd headed for the concourse at halftime in pursuit of a cold beverage or perhaps an aerosol air freshener, UNLV led by 16, 45-29, and it was let's get ready for Auburn on Saturday.

But when UNLV stopped playing defense, stopped rebounding, stopped making free throws and stopped acting as if any of that mattered, NAU started to come back.

Adras would say later that the Rebels were playing not to lose instead of to win, which might have been the case, had the opponent not had "NORTHERN" stitched above "ARIZONA" on its jerseys.

Whatever was happening, by the middle of the second half you could sense the Lumberjacks' confidence growing, as the 3-point shots that had clanked off the rim or slammed off the backboard in the first half began finding the bottom of the net.

What the heck, the NAU players must have been thinking. It smells like Bozeman in here, so why not just pretend we're playing Montana State?

And so the Rebels, who are 2-1 against the Pac-10, had the Big Sky fall on them when Bond, Aaron Bond, scored from in close with about .007 remaining. It was NAU's only lead.

"We've got to put this behind us in a hurry," UNLV's Demetrius Hunter said, "or we'll be 5-4 by Christmas."

And that, like just about everything about Thursday night, would just plain stink.