Michigan trip a holiday treat for Lady Rebels

Adam Candee

Friday, Dec. 3, 2004 | 8:50 a.m.

College basketball players usually get nothing but lumps of coal and wind sprints from their coaches in the dog days of December.

Lady Rebels coach Regina Miller, however, is giving a big group of her players an early holiday gift this weekend with a trip to Michigan for two games near the girls' hometowns.

Looking to rebound from a hard Sunday home loss to No. 2 North Carolina, UNLV (2-3) begins its quick trip with a Saturday afternoon game against Detroit Mercy (1-3), the school where senior RanDee Henry began her college career in her hometown. Junior Nejlah Clark and redshirt freshman Latosha Pace both hail from Detroit as well, and junior Sheena Moore is from Lansing.

"I try to get back to areas where players are from and we might not be able to get necessarily in their home state, but we have several on the team from the Midwest," Miller said.

The Lady Rebels move on to a Monday game at Michigan (2-2) before returning home for a two-week break for finals. It's a quick taste of true home that excites the Michigan natives on the team, all of whom expect a good gathering of family and friends for their first chance to represent UNLV on their home turf.

"The focus and challenge for me as a coach is just keeping them focused, executing and doing things well and not getting too excited," Miller said. "There's kind of like a median that you've got to make sure you don't be too up or too excited."

Miller scheduled the trip with her heavy Midwest contingent -- which also includes Illinois natives Sherry McCracklin, Kisha Lee and Amy Loftus -- in mind. Games in hometowns are a common way for college coaches to thank their recruits, especially for a senior like Henry.

Henry's father, Randy, was once a draft pick of the NBA's Detroit Pistons and he spent two years coaching basketball at UDM as well. Henry signed with the Titans and earned Horizon League first-team honors with averages of 15.2 points and 6.2 rebounds as a sophomore in 2001-02 before transferring to UNLV, sitting out a season and helping the Lady Rebels to the WNIT final last year.

Henry, the Mountain West Conference's leading scorer at 17.7 points per game in 2003-04, wanted to see life outside Detroit and moved far away, but she has found a second home in Las Vegas.

"It was really an adjustment for me," Henry told the Detroit News in March. "Basketball-wise, school, life, everything. But it really worked out to my advantage. I have no regrets. I'm really glad I came out here to UNLV. This is a program I fit right into, and good things are happening for me here."

The first game of the trip looks to be a tune-up for UNLV against a Detroit Mercy squad that lost Thursday to No. 18 Minnesota by 52 points. The Lady Rebels played the Golden Gophers tough in their season opener before falling, 77-69.

Then again, after UNLV's surprising home-opener loss to Central Florida, little can be taken for granted in Miller's eyes. She likes the idea of a cold-weather trip in December to toughen her squad for the ugly rides to Air Force, Colorado State and Wyoming in conference season.

Actually, just the rare experience of playing on the road could benefit the Lady Rebels. This trip accounts for UNLV's only games away from home between Nov. 15 and Jan. 15, and it is the Lady Rebels' only non-conference road swing outside of the season-opening tournament in Seattle.

"This is good for us, especially traveling back to the Midwest where the temperature is totally different," Miller said. "We go to the Wyomings and the Colorados and that helps us to go play at those locations early in the year."

For now, Miller just wants to see improvement from the 84-76 loss to North Carolina in which the Lady Rebels could easily have stolen a marquee victory after twice trailing by just two points late in the game. The tasks at hand for the trip are simple.

"We can't give up as many easy buckets," Miller said. "We have to convert our stops into points, and we didn't."