Tuesday, March 4, 2003 | 10:22 a.m.
Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.
Like a Mercedes without a hood ornament, Marcus Banks wasn't quite 100 percent. Bent at the waist and with his hands on his knees late in the game as he tried to catch his breath when time was called, the UNLV basketball star may have seemed impaired at a glance, yet he was still the sharpest car on the lot.
In the rarefied air of scenic Laramie, he was pushing himself. But he knew, as his coach, his teammates and the Wyoming Cowboys did as well, that the game was on the line and that he likely held the Rebels' only chance for victory.
He took the ball with eight seconds to play and lit off for the basket, hopeful of reaching the iron and drawing a foul. But an unsolicited bump from defender Donta Richardson caused Banks to lose a bit of his balance, and, a moment later, the ball as it ricocheted off his leg.
There was no foul and the game was over. The Rebels lost 69-66 Monday night and pigeonholed themselves into a singular task if they're to qualify for the NCAA tournament.
They're going to have to win the Mountain West Conference tournament here next week in its Thomas & Mack Center finale, or be relegated to the secondary National Invitation Tournament.
Here's something else you can take to the Bank(s): Without Marcus, UNLV would have had a disastrous season. He has become something of a one-man team.
As the season progressed, the Rebels regressed in many respects. Intermittently, expectations were lowered, all the way from the opening top-25 hopes to where they are today: gasping for breath, and not just from playing in the High Plains of Laramie.
Like the poor sap committed to a weight-reduction program, the Rebels have gotten thinner as the year has gone along. They're getting almost nothing from their shortened bench and even a few of the starters' numbers are down.
Banks has compensated as best he can. Against the Cowboys, he played all 40 minutes and may have handled the ball on every possession despite of the physical challenge of playing at 7,220 feet.
You know how sometimes a player can have a "quiet" game and score 23 points, as if you don't notice until it's over that he had that many? Well, Banks was so involved in UNLV's offense it would have been easy to believe he scored 50 -- and not just 23 -- of his team's points at Wyoming.
The 14 NBA scouts who were supposedly at the game got their travel voucher's worth: Banks demonstrated that he has first-round abilities.
More subtly, he's providing leadership even when the ball isn't in play. When Dalron Johnson committed a dumb foul in the backcourt after missing a first-half shot, Banks went over and thumped him none too playfully in the chest as a reminder to keep his head in the game and avoid the fouls that occasionally exile him to the bench. Forlorn at first, Johnson nodded and took a wiser approach thereafter.
Likewise, when the game was over it was Banks who did his best to encourage his teammates as they licked their wounds in the locker room. He has taken a "We're not out of this" approach that forbids him from seeing the glass as anything but half full.
But, in reality, it's also half empty. And the spillage is evident as UNLV's postseason hopes evaporate.
archive
