Columnist Dean Juipe: UNLV could use a center of attention

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2003 | 10:20 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.

Bg men ... towering men, in fact ... abound in college (and professional) basketball and they tend to play an integral role in the outcome of their teams' games. As a rule, the bigger your big man -- as in Shaq or Yao -- the better your chance for victory.

It wasn't apparent Monday night as UNLV destroyed Colorado State at the Thomas & Mack Center to regain its fans' goodwill, but the Rebels not only lack a forceful and legitimate center this season, they almost always do.

It's an historical thing. UNLV simply does not attract top-notch centers.

Obviously, having a dominant presence in the middle isn't always a significant factor, and it certainly wasn't as the Rebels steamrolled the stumbling and bumbling Rams 90-57 to improve to 13-6 before a reduced but lively crowd.

But in a league with more than its share of height and bulk at the front line positions, UNLV is often caught with its guard down.

Even the best UNLV teams were barely adequate at the center position.

Need proof? Well, the Rebels have never had an All-America center. They've also never had a conference Player of the Year who was a center. And of 12 UNLV players who have been drafted in the first round by NBA teams, only two -- Elmore Spencer in 1992 and Keon Clark in '98 -- were centers.

The center rep on the school's "All-Millennium" team was George Ackles, who filled the gap on some strong squads from 1988 to '91. Yet Ackles himself was hardly a workhorse or a statistical giant.

UNLV's all-time leading rebounder, Sidney Green, was a forward.

Only 10 UNLV centers have ever received first, second or honorable mention all-conference accolades: Jerry Baskerville (1972); Richie Adams (1984); Richard Robinson (1985); David Butler (1989, '90); Ackles (1991); Spencer (1992); Kebu Stewart (1994); Eric Lee (1995); Clark (1997); and Kas Kambala (1998, '00, '01). Of that group, both Adams and Kambala were primarily forwards who were periodically cast as centers as a last resort.

As droughts go, this one has a Sahara Desert quality to it. No matter who is coaching the Rebels, he hasn't been able to induce a major-league center to Las Vegas under any conditions.

Perhaps things will change. Perhaps a newcomer who will be here next season, 6-foot-10 Chris Adams of San Francisco, will remake the mold.

But given the past, UNLV fans can hardly expect to see a bruising behemoth with outlandish pro potential anchoring the post. Yet, they'd agree, it sure would be fun to have such a guy for a year or two or three.

Centers can dictate a game like no one else on the floor. And the Mountain West has its share of dictatorial big men, such as Wyoming's Uche Nsonwu-Amadi and BYU's Rafael Araujo, who have 18 double-figure rebound games between them.

Dalron Johnson, a forward, leads UNLV with three such games.

You would think solely by chance the Rebels would have had a monster in the middle somewhere along the line, yet it just hasn't happened. UNLV, it seems, is always athletic and diversified, but is never built from the inside out.

It is, at the very least, peculiar, if not an outright shortcoming.