Columnist Dean Juipe: Struggling UNLV needs to regroup

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2003 | 9:57 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.

Bleak as it seems, it's time to revise and reassess the situation.

Top-25 team? I guess not.

League champion? It appears unlikely right now.

NCAA Tournament bid? Not at this rate.

Yes, UNLV's basketball season has slipped into disarray. One that once looked so promising has hit the skids after consecutive losses to open the Mountain West Conference season, the latest of which was Monday night's 66-63 heartbreaker to visiting Utah at the Thomas & Mack Center.

Could-a, should-a. The Rebels are 0-2 at a time when 2-0 was within range.

Pinpointing the reason for this most recent failure is easy if you just look at the stat sheet, but more difficult in a broader respect.

Purely by the numbers, the Rebels lost the game at the foul line by missing 10 of 24 free throws. They were also out-rebounded, though that's hardly surprising when the opponent is still another in Utah's line of cloned -- i.e., big and fundamentally sound -- teams.

In addition, Dalron Johnson was held to nine points, or seven beneath his average, and Marcus Banks -- for a second consecutive game -- did virtually all of his scoring in the second half. He finished with 22 points after having only four at the break, but he also missed five free throws in an evening that was largely unspectacular by his usual standards.

Sympathizers can also cite the loss of starting guard Demetrius Hunter, who's out with an injury, as being a factor that had to be worth at least the three-point differential in the final score.

But, in truth, there is more than just a statistical justification for what has happened since the MWC opened play. And at its heart is the Rebels' inability to have a dominant presence in the lane and underneath the baskets.

J.K. Edwards has had an up-and-down season but showed some spark against Utah before leveling off and, eventually, fouling out with seven points and as many boards. He needs to keep himself in the game (physically and mentally) for UNLV to be effective against the majority of teams it will face in conference games.

His back-up, Omari Pearson, banged his head early in the game and sat, dejectedly, on the bench thereafter, obviously unable to play.

James Peters, a third big man, excelled at times but also had a snafu or two that proved harmful, such as launching a three-point field goal during a stretch late in the first half when the Rebels as a team were ice cold.

UNLV knew the pace of the game would be slow, as Utah has the ninth-ranked defense in the country and is uniformly committed to using every bit of the shot clock every time it can. With this as a given, each possession had an inflated importance and the fact that the Rebels lost control of the boards and couldn't run specific plays for their centers and forwards cut into their offensive potential.

This lack of versatility cost the Rebels at BYU -- where they were making their free throws -- last Thursday and it was especially costly against a Utah team that is stacked with big bodies.

Obviously, there is no solution for this problem. It's too late to add a big man, so UNLV is apt to find itself in similar predicaments throughout the remainder of the season. It will either have to do a better job with what it has, or the disappointing nights will stretch on seemingly forever.

So where is the season going?

The league has a definite home-court advantage, yet two Mountain West visitors won games Monday and a third almost pulled it off, proving it can be done. So the Rebels are going to have to win some games on the road if they're going to be even remotely contending for the regular-season title.

The season can certainly be salvaged, yet maybe many of us have overrated the Rebels and the idea of them climbing into the rankings and perhaps making a nice run in the NCAA Tournament may be little more than wishful thinking. Maybe they're just an average team in an average league, although I still suspect they have greater potential.

And let's not forget that the conference tournament will be held in Las Vegas, and the winner of that event is the team that finishes with all the marbles.

All in all, it's a little too early to panic or turn your back on this team. But it had better find a way to utilize the assets it has, or laments similar to this one will become all too commonplace in the next two months.