Rebels to play Hawaii in NIT

Steve Guiremand

Monday, March 17, 2003 | 10:03 a.m.

March Madness officially became March Sadness for the UNLV Rebels shortly after 3:30 p.m. Sunday.

That was when the final teams in the 2003 NCAA tournament bracket were announced on national TV. And the Rebels (21-10), who only hours earlier had crumbled down the stretch in a stunning 62-61 loss to Colorado State in the championship game of the Mountain West Conference tournament, were once again on the outside looking in.

For the second consecutive year, it was as simple as NIT for UNLV.

The Rebels on Sunday night found out they will at least get to host a first-round NIT game Wednesday when they face Hawaii (18-11) at 9 p.m. at the Thomas & Mack Center. The game will be nationally televised by ESPN.

"We're all disappointed that we're not in the (NCAA) tournament," UNLV coach Charlie Spoonhour said. "It's troubling because that's our main goal. But now we have to go on with our lives."

The Rebels had planned to watch the NCAA pairings in the Si Redd Room at the Thomas & Mack Center. But after losing Saturday night's chance at an automatic NCAA bid in heartbreaking fashion, Spoonhour let players and coaches watch the proceedings at their homes.

"Obviously, I didn't sleep very well last night," Spoonhour said. "I was concerned about the NCAA tournament and also coming off of three tough games like that."

Spoonhour and his staff went back and watched the final eight minutes of the CSU game on tape to try to figure what went wrong. UNLV seemed comfortably ahead, 58-48, when forward Dalron Johnson scored with 7:51 left and the Rams without injured center Matt Nelson (cornea abrasion) out of the game.

But Colorado State (19-13), which lost seven consecutive games during one Mountain West stretch and had to rally in the final two weeks to finish ahead of Air Force and New Mexico in the MWC standings, outscored UNLV, 14-3, after that. The only Rebels points came on a 3-pointer from the top of the key by senior guard Jermaine Lewis.

"(Colorado State) made a couple of big plays," Spoonhour said. "We had a couple of defensive breakdowns. And we had the ball under the basket four times and came away with no points. That's unusual for us. Usually we'd at least get a few free throws."

Meanwhile, the Rams, who defeated Utah, Wyoming, BYU and the Rebels in a five-game span the past two weeks, pulled it out when senior forward Brian Greene hit a tough 12-foot jumper over Lamar Bigby with just 5.7 seconds to go.

"We don't have any excuses," Johnson said. "We played hard. We left it out there on the floor. It's tough for it to end up like that, on a forced shot that went in."

Still, the Rebels, armed with a solid RPI rating of 40, held out slim hopes that the NCAA Selection Committee might take four MWC teams. Those hopes ended quickly, however, when the third game was revealed and had conference co-champ BYU, considered a lock because of an excellent 19 RPI, as just a No. 12 seed. The Cougars thought they would receive somewhere between a six and eight seed.

Utah, the other MWC co-champ, also got little respect from the committee, picking up a No. 9 seed in the Midwest Region. Colorado State was a 14th seed which put it on a par with schools such as Holy Cross, Manhattan and Troy State.

Ouch!

"I was surprised at that," Spoonhour said of BYU's 12th seed. "And Utah's, too."

UNLV had the highest RPI of any team left out of the tournament.

NCAA Selection Committee chairman Jim Livengood of Arizona -- he's the fellow who hired embattled John Mackovic as head football coach two years ago -- said RPI was one of just a number of factors that went into separating at-large teams. Others included strength of schedule, how a team finished and quality wins.

"I think from my perspective maybe we put too much emphasis on what the computer rankings were," Spoonhour said.

According to Spoonhour, UNLV had a solid No. 59 ranking in strength of schedule.

"Our schedule would have obviously been even stronger if Texas and Louisville hadn't pulled out of their games," he said. "Texas got a TV game with Arizona which was more lucrative and decided to put our game off."

Louisville, perhaps fearful of what kind of reception head coach Rick Pitino might recieve after spurning the UNLV job two years ago, also backed out of a scheduled non-conference game.

"I would have liked to have had a chance to play those games," Spoonhour said.

Now, the Rebels will try to put behind their NCAA disappointment and get ready to host a Hawaii squad that lost to eventual WAC champion Tulsa, 66-56, in the semifinals of the WAC tournament. The Warriors had hoped to host Eastern Washington in a first round NIT game at the Stan Sheriff Center, where they are 15-1 this season, but instead will play another game on the mainland.