Columnist Dean Juipe: Blowout loss hurts just as much as a close one

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2004 | 9:50 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.

For those who wanted to see something different, something out of the ordinary, something a little less gut-wrenching and disturbing than a final-second loss from the UNLV men's basketball team, they got it Monday night.

Even if it was just as excruciating.

Instead of fading or going flat at the wire, which has plagued the Rebels in close games of late, this time they came up with an alternate scenario. This time they wouldn't leave the game to the hands of fate.

This time they lost well before the clock started to wind down.

This time they just went ahead and got creamed.

Looking terrible for much of the game and never making a serious run at Utah, the Rebels were lambasted 70-56 at the Hunstman Center in Salt Lake City. For anyone who thought the pregame point spread of the Utes minus 7 1/2 was a bit much, think again.

Discouragingly for UNLV, this was a game in which it wanted to look sharp and rebound from an ugly loss Saturday at BYU. But, instead, it dropped behind almost from the opening tip and veered from the usual script of keeping the game close and losing by some heartbreaking sequence of luck and misplays at the end.

Utah, 6-2 in league play and 18-3 overall, owned the backboards and the scoreboard. It controlled the play with its array of big men and its outside attack, cruising to an easier-than-expected win in spite of occasional sloppy play and a few too many turnovers.

UNLV, 3-5 and 12-8, is looking more and more like a National Invitation Tournament team with each passing week. The nice win against Air Force a week ago aside, the Rebels can forget about the high stakes of the NCAA tournament and the Big Dance at this rate.

And for all the talk of an improving UNLV team that was responding to additional teaching and instruction by its coaching staff, the truth is the Rebels don't look any better than they did in November. They're athletic, yet they still slide into mental and physical lapses that a team that might be progressing would be avoiding at this point of the season.

Here are a couple of quick for instances: Romel Beck fouling Utah guard Nick Jacobson on a 3-point shot with the Rebels down by 12 and with 8:40 to play, then, moments later, losing the ball on a behind-the-back dribble attempt on a two-on-one fast break. Those mistakes allowed the Utes to stay comfortably ahead at a time when the Rebels needed to make a move, if they were going to make one at all.

It wasn't just Beck, of course. No one player is the cause of a 14-point loss, especially when the team is outrebounded 46-21 and scores its fewest points of the season.

UNLV lost this one not only because it was on the road and playing in a building where it habitually struggles, it lost because it was getting beat defensively down low and because it couldn't physically match the bigger Utes. It lost because it didn't play well and, in all likelihood, because it simply didn't have the better players.

The defensive intensity that marked the win against Air Force hasn't been there since, and offensively the Rebels -- who would like to go "inside out" to not only try things down low but to free up their perimeter shooters -- have too often settled for a quick shot rather than continue working for a better one.

They just don't seem to have the outside attack it takes to win from there, and their inside game would be satisfactory only if they never had to play teams that were bigger and more fundamentally sound.

So they're 12-8, not a factor in the Mountain West Conference race and almost totally dependent on doing well in the conference tournament if they're going to do anything other than play in the NIT.

Geez, the way things are going maybe the NIT isn't even a sure thing.