Columnist Dean Juipe: Duty calls but Falcons stay in game

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2003 | 10:01 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.

Falling back on a little military protocol of its own, UNLV did what every good soldier is asked to do: See your duty, and do it.

The Rebels got past an Air Force team Monday night at the Thomas & Mack Center in a game that was a little closer than need be, yet one that went into the win column by a 74-70 score.

They outrebounded the Falcons, they had fewer turnovers and they made a ton of free throws.

In short, they added to Air Force's many basketball-related woes.

This is, after all, a team that has not won a Mountain West Conference road game in more than three years, or 27 games ago.

It's also a program that hasn't had a winning season in 24 years and probably, at 11-13 overall, won't have one this year either.

It's also a team that could in theory as well as practicality be bothered by such peripheral concerns as the looming war with Iraq, and, perhaps, North Korea. Someone has to fly those fighter jets on combat runs, and these guys at the Academy in sneakers and shorts will someday be required to do it.

"Actually, they don't appear to be bothered by that," said the team's traveling faculty adviser, Col. James Head, when asked if the presence of war might be a distraction among the Falcons.

"They're students, and war is a bit remote for them right now. They not only have yet to graduate, they'll have an additional two years of training after that.

"They're focused on a career in the service, but they don't actually talk about going to war or anything like that. They may have friends who are preparing to go (to Iraq), but they know the career they have chosen will inevitably lead them to the sharpest edge of the spear.

"If nothing else, playing basketball for the time being builds character."

Oh, Air Force has character. Its basketball team is scrappy and committed to a variation of the famously disciplined Princeton offense, but it also has little in the way of collective height and a history of bringing up the rear.

That the Rebels were pushed to the limit to add to the Falcons' road losing streak was scary enough for those taking in a game that looked easy from a distance. Yet it went to the wire and apparently wasn't too dissimilar to the teams' earlier meeting this season, which Air Force won by four points on its home court last month.

"Ain't nobody blocking your shots tonight," UNLV assistant coach Derek Thomas said to his players as he fed them passes in a final pregame warmup. The inference: UNLV could use the 13-inch height advantage that its starters had on the Falcons' opening unit to keep the fly boys grounded.

But even the simplest of reconnaissance plans can have flaws, and the Rebels had theirs with an offense that occasionally looked ragged and lacked direction. They also failed to completely grasp the subtleties of the Air Force game plan, which is worrisome in that the Rebels' excuse after they lost at the Academy was that they "didn't quite know what to expect."

This time they knew what to expect, yet struggled nonetheless.

But go ahead and put it down as a battle won, and won without casualties at that.

It's a mission accomplished.