Columnist Dean Juipe: Coach Spoonhour has worn out his welcome

Dean Juipe

Monday, Feb. 16, 2004 | 9:39 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.

That's it. This has gone on long enough. The time has come.

Charlie Spoonhour has got to go.

It's not easy, nice or polite to kick an old man when he's down, but the 64-year-old Spoonhour has outlived his usefulness at UNLV. After the disgraceful performance of his men's basketball team Sunday at Missouri on the final stop of a horrid three-game road trip, the Rebels and their program are badly in need of a leadership change.

The only solution is to relieve Spoonhour of his duties or force him into the retirement he was considering a year ago.

There is no overriding reason, incentive or impetus to see the picture any other way. A coach who came to Las Vegas to retire should be retired before he takes the school's most prized athletic possession even deeper into an abyss that has cost it immeasurable respect, fans and income.

The Rebels lost 94-60 to Missouri at the Hearnes Center in Columbia in a game that was nationally televised and locally shunned after UNLV had its halftime total of 27 points doubled by the high-flying Tigers.

The Rebels were so indifferent defensively that Missouri actually scored on 21 of 22 consecutive possessions while building a first-half lead that would have been insurmountable even against a team of NBA all-stars.

Let's see here, the Rebels were passive on defense, couldn't score, didn't hit the boards and generally displayed the lack of cohesiveness and harmony that surfaced and made headlines here all last week.

The adversity that is enveloping the Rebels had its seal licked a week ago and it is about to become all-encompassing.

Now you tell me, why should any coach be absolved of responsibility when every element of his team's play is so putrid? Why should any community be asked to turn the other cheek when a coach and his team have underachieved in so many areas?

UNLV failed to compete against a Missouri team that was 10-10, had three players on the bench in street clothes and is four players down from the team that hoped to contend for the Big 12 championship when the season opened. But, thanks to the Rebels, the Tigers -- who, to their credit, were hitting an ungodly assortment of shots -- looked like the best team in the country.

UNLV, 12-9, has now, in all probability, eliminated itself as a contender for an at-large berth to the NCAA tournament. The Rebels will either win the Mountain West Conference tournament March 11-13 in Denver -- as unlikely as that seems -- or they will fail to advance to the NCAA tournament and fail to achieve what once looked to be a very reasonable goal.

Spoonhour's three seasons in Las Vegas have led to this: The guys on the team admit they don't like each other and, it's fair to say after this three-loss road trip to BYU, Utah and Missouri, the fans don't care much for them either.

Spoonhour and Spoonhour alone shoulders the burden for his team's miserable play and the program's demise. He's 54-31 at UNLV and that's simply not good enough for a school that once routinely went to the NCAA tournament and frequently was at least an outside contender for the national title.

Even Spoonhour's old friends from nearby St. Louis who were at the game in Columbia had to see the forest in spite of the trees. They had to know that UNLV has regressed, that it is no longer the force it once was and that the Grim Reaper is at the door.

They had to at least suspect what many of us in Las Vegas have come to know, that a coach who was hired as a "caretaker" three years ago is no longer getting the job done.

They had to realize Spoonhour, whether he likes it or not, has come to the end of the line.