Columnist Dean Juipe: Spoonhour may walk away

Dean Juipe

Monday, March 17, 2003 | 10:03 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.

Thus far, it's only a whisper, cloaked in innuendo and limited to off-the-record conversation among those on the periphery of the UNLV basketball team.

The subject: Charlie Spoonhour's status as head coach of the Rebels.

The belief: He might just retire this year.

The proof: He has told confidants that he is unhappy coaching within a program that accentuates up-tempo play.

The X factor: He has quit before with time left on a contract.

Spoonhour is closing in on his 64th birthday and has a year showing on the contract he signed with UNLV in March of 2001. His first UNLV team went 21-11 and the current one is 21-10 and headed for the NIT, bypassed as it was Sunday when the NCAA tournament brackets were announced.

The time remaining on his contract may be irrelevant, considering that Spoonhour had four years to go on his contract with Saint Louis University when he resigned in 1999. He then spent two years in semi-retirement, working as a broadcast analyst, before coming to UNLV as something of a "caretaker" coach willing to provide short-term stability to a program that was repetitively spinning out of control.

As part of his deal with UNLV, Spoonhour was allowed to bring a son, Jay, along with him as an assistant coach. Optimistically, each was hoping Jay, now 32, would someday succeed his father as head coach of the Rebels.

But that's not going to happen. "Only if the team had made the final eight for a couple of years in a row," would Charlie have had the clout and influence it would have taken to be able to turn the club over to Jay, a source close to the program revealed.

If anything, the current Rebels remain wildly unpredictable on the court and a berth in the Elite Eight has long since been out of the question. With the team about to lose Marcus Banks to graduation -- its record might have been reversed this season without him -- and next season's prospects uncertain, Spoonhour could easily slip into a retirement he initially thought was beckoning four years ago.

It's not that he doesn't enjoy coaching, or has tired of Las Vegas. But here's the problem from his perspective: He wants a team that's deliberate, one that can execute and play defense, but he's afraid to implement that system at UNLV, fearing that fans and players alike would revolt.

A friend told him not to worry, that the fans would adjust if the Rebels returned to national prominence and won every game by a 50-45 score. But he doesn't see it that way and feels the potential backlash would be significant if he installs a slow-down game that takes the runnin' out of the Rebels.

Spoonhour has won 361 games at the Division I level, plus another 205 as a junior college head coach and another 172 as a high school head coach in a coaching career that dates from 1961.

Congenial and friendly, he has done a good but not great job with the Rebels and could likely retain his position as head coach for a few more years if he were so inclined.

But he has privately suggested that he doesn't feel as if he's a perfect fit at UNLV, and the trying nature of the current season may have taken a toll.

He may have had enough.