Columnist Dean Juipe: Your father’s Rebels no longer play here

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2003 | 9:37 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.

You've seen the score and maybe you saw the game. Even this many hours later, it isn't easy to take.

But don't go there. Don't beat yourself up about it. Don't even think in terms of what UNLV used to be and how routinely it once beat the tar out of teams such as Nevada-Reno.

Your father's Rebels are long gone and they've been replaced by a makeshift group that is so inconspicuous that even the home crowd Monday night at the Thomas & Mack Center was tempted to holler a derogatory "Who's he?" toward its own players as they were introduced before the game.

Replacing seven lettermen is never easy and the task is doubly difficult for the Rebels right now in that two returnees -- and big men -- are sitting out due to penalties for phone-card infractions. With J.K. Edwards still out for four more games and James Peters for one, their teammates have been doing their own random dialing -- and getting a busy signal.

UNLV is on hold. The Rebels may be 1-1 but they were pushed around by UNR in a 74-62 loss that was worse than the final score might initially indicate.

The Rebels' deficit was 20 at one time, leading to such embarrassment that last season's record 25-point home loss to Southern Cal surfaced as an untidy recollection.

Ah, last season. Twenty one wins in 32 games, a trip to the NIT, an NBA star in the making leading the club even if it couldn't compete with USC.

It didn't seem so bad at the time.

But the days have long since passed that a win over Reno is automatic, even if this was UNLV's first home loss to the Wolf Pack in seven years. Equally distant: winning streaks of 10 and 11 games by UNLV over UNR, statistics and fonder of another era, of a time before Reno had the best player on the floor.

Its excellent swingman, Kirk Snyder, appeared as if he could have scored 30 had he kept driving to the basket or hitting those pull-up jumpers, but he settled for 20 in a still superlative outing that had the two NBA scouts in attendance taking notice. He's going to give a lot of teams trouble.

And while he's doing that, this UNLV team is going to get better and you don't have to say that it can't get any worse. When Edwards and Peters return, at least there will be somebody there to block the opposition's path to the basket.

But it wasn't just the Rebels' matador defense that caused this stomach-churning mishap. It was an overall failure to defend and an inability to shoot that punctuated the blowout, as UNLV was constantly beaten off the dribble and came within a single 3-point field goal of having its world-record streak of 541 games with at least one trey come to an end.

That's right, the Rebels had only one successful shot from behind the arc (in 13 attempts).

Tark, where are you?

Oh, he's right over there, sitting courtside and probably taking no pleasure at all with the carnage that was within his sight. The great coach still takes in most of his old team's home games, a visible reminder of what used to be at what was once a great basketball school.

For those without a media guide, UNLV still ranks as the third-best program in college basketball history when it comes to cumulative winning percentage. But that mark and that recruiting attraction will take a beating if the horde of newcomers enlisted by Charlie Spoonhour can't find the net or a way to prevent their opponents from reaching it.

The Rebels are going to be small even with Edwards and Peters, and a lot of their upcoming games are apt to be decided by this crazy flaw. And if someone other than Odartey Blankson -- who had a stellar game in defeat with 20 points and 11 rebounds -- doesn't come around and assist or cajole his teammates into compensating for their physical shortcomings, many a line will be drawn in the loss column before the season is over.

But -- remember -- things have just begun and we're not going to get too worked up over a single setback. Spoonhour has probably told his team to forget this game and maybe you should, too.