Not a ‘perfect’ 10, but Spoon will take it

Steve Guiremand

Monday, Jan. 6, 2003 | 9:48 a.m.

It's just the first week of January but UNLV basketball coach Charlie Spoonhour is already thinking about March.

That's March as in March Madness.

After the Rebels (10-2) defeated a good Santa Clara (9-4) squad that figures to challenge Gonzaga in the West Coast Conference on Saturday night at the Thomas & Mack Center, Spoonhour said he was happy to see his team reach double digits in non-conference victories.

"When you start at the beginning of the season you always have a magic number," Spoonhour said after the 75-53 victory. "And you can set that magic number anywhere you want ... eight, nine, 10 (victories). In my mind, I thought if we only got nine (wins) I'd be a little disappointed. If we got 10, I think that's pretty good. If you get 10-plus, you've really done yourselves some good for the dynamics further on down the road."

If 20 wins is the magic number to get invited to the NCAA Tournament, as many coaches believe, then the Rebels are already halfway there with non-conference games against DePaul (Saturday) and USC (Feb. 9) remaining. With the Mountain West Conference being competitive from top to bottom -- even perennial cellar dwellar Air Force is 8-4 this season -- the more non-conference wins the Rebels can accumulate will give them that much better of a shot of reaching their No. 1 goal.

"We've got two more non-conference games," said Spoonhour, who picked up his 350th career coaching victory Saturday night. "If we do something with one or both of those, then that really is a plus in our favor. And I told our guys that. I think they understand that.

"It's kind of silly to talk that way," Spoonhour continued, "but the truth of the matter is you start the year talking about going to the (NCAA) Tournament. The way you get to the tournament is you take care of business like this ... I was scared to death of this game."

And for good reason.

Santa Clara, despite losing all-WCC guard Kyle Bailey for the season with a back injury, brought a six-game win streak to the Thomas & Mack Center, including victories over Princeton (77-71) and Mississippi Valley State (70-63) en route to winning the Cable Car Classic last week in Santa Clara.

The Broncos, who lost by just two points at Gonzaga last year, have one of the West Coast's most respected coaches in Dick Davey, a three-time WCC Coach of the Year.

Santa Clara made it tough for about 24 minutes Saturday, battling back from an 11-3 deficit to tie the game 39-39 on a 3-point basket by guard Ethan Rohde with 16:15 remaining.

That's when UNLV buckled down and played arguably its best basketball of the season, outscoring the Broncos 26-4 and holding Santa Clara without a point for over six minutes during a 19-0 spurt.

"I thought we had better defensive awareness by far than we had all year," Spoonhour said. "I didn't realize the run extended quite like it did. What was it, 19-0? We haven't had one of those since I've been here."

The Rebels took Sunday off and have five days to prepare for Saturday's game at DePaul. Five days later, they open Mountain West Conference play at BYU (10-3), which has the nation's longest home winning streak at 42 games.

So what will Spoonhour have his squad working on this week in practice?

"We'll look at DePaul stuff, but we're going to work with our defense," he said. "I thought (Saturday night) we showed some signs of life. We need to improve in four or five areas -- we'll start with getting back and rebounding -- and we'll try and piece things together."