Monday, Oct. 20, 2003 | 9:57 a.m.
A thin front line that lacks depth will likely be even thinner, and shallower, when the UNLV basketball team starts its season in one month.
Before practice Sunday, neither center J.K. Edwards nor forward James Peters revealed much about their alleged involvement in the campus-wide misuse of an unauthorized athletic-department phone card that made summertime headlines.
Rebels coach Charlie Spoonhour said he expects an announcement, regarding the number of games each player will be suspended, to come from UNLV athletic director Mike Hamrick's office today.
"As soon as (Hamrick) announces it," Spoonhour said, "we'll talk about it."
Both Edwards and Peters are seniors. During the last academic year, they were the only two UNLV basketball players who lived in the campus dormitories from where an abundance of those illicit calls were reportedly placed.
"Nah, I'd rather not talk about it," Peters said.
"Well, they won't let me say nothing about about it right now," Edwards said. "They've told me not to say anything."
Edwards did confirm, however, that a suspension is looming.
"Yeah, maybe," he said. "Maybe, but I don't know exactly. They won't let me say anything."
Of approximately 500 students who were implicated in the misuse of the phone card, an investigation determined that 50 were UNLV athletes.
Initially, 15, most of them football players, were allowed to resume their collegiate careers after serving NCAA- or school-mandated suspensions and making restitution for placing nearly $2,500 worth of calls.
Edwards and Peters are part of a group of winter-sport athletes who have been implicated in the scam. Spring-sport athletes who made improper calls with the card will be dealt with early in 2004.
Spoonhour and his staff were delivered an offseason blow when they were unable to add Chris Adams, one of the nation's finest junior college centers, to their roster.
In addition, forward Omari Pearson transferred to a Division II school in Pennsylvania. Peters, Marquette transfer Odartey Blankson and sophomore Louis Amundson are left to help Edwards in the post at both ends of the court.
"I didn't understand it, at first," Edwards said of the program's inability to add Adams. "Then, things just happen. We just have to take what we got. I'm cool. He's not here, so we can't look in the past. We have to look forward to the future."
Overall, because of attrition and the NCAA's "5-8 Rule" -- which restricts more than five scholarships being doled out in one year, and a maximum of eight in two -- Spoonhour has been reduced to 10 scholarship athletes on his 2003-04 squad.
That's three below the normal limit. Throw in a couple of walk-ons, and the average Division I roster contains 15 players. However, Spoonhour has only a dozen.
During the first two practices this weekend, he wasn't even able to field three separate units for full-court, five-man weave drills.
"I think you can see if we lose anyone on this team, by injury or any other way, it'll affect us," Spoonhour said. "We don't have a lot of guys. We like the ones we've got, but some already have nicks and bruises.
"What we'll do is try to make sure we don't harp on who's not available. This is who's available and who we'll play. We'll make the adjustments."
Like they did last season at Utah, when a nagging Achilles' heel problem kept guard Demetrius Hunter from dressing and Pearson sustained an early injury.
"Then someone got into foul trouble, and we had only six scholarship players left to play the whole game," Spoonhour said. "I'm sure, over the course of the year, we'll end up short-handed at times. That's natural."
UNLV plays host to Delaware State at the Thomas & Mack Center on Nov. 21 in its season opener.
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