Rebels cap Jay’s day with rally to win

Steve Guiremand

Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2004 | 10:04 a.m.

It was a real roller coaster of emotions for Jay Spoonhour on Tuesday.

Just hours after being named interim head coach at UNLV in place of his ill father, Spoonhour realized a dream by coaching his first Division I college basketball game. And a Rebels squad that seemed on the verge of tossing in the towel for the remainder of the season responded with an impressive second-half comeback en route to a 68-65 victory against San Diego State at the Thomas & Mack Center.

Point guard Jerel Blassingame scored six of his 10 points in the final minute, including a perfect 4-of-4 at the free throw line, and forward Romel Beck scored a game-high 25 points, including 4-of-5 from 3-point range, as UNLV (13-9, 4-5) rallied from a 10-point deficit in the final 9 1/2 minutes to snap a three-game losing streak.

"I never caught up with my emotions all day," Spoonhour admitted. "You go from the initial call, and you're worried to death, and then the next thing ... I can't really put that into words. You're just glad the players came out and responded the way that they did."

Jay's father, Charlie Spoonhour, resigned his head coaching duties late Tuesday morning on the advice of his doctor due to heart related problems.

"It was emotional," Jay Spoonhour said of his UNLV coaching debut. "It's emotional only in the context that I'm happy for our guys that we won a game. There's not a team in the country that needed to win more than we did today. ... The way the guys played, I was just proud of them."

The Rebels, playing with a sense of urgency that had been badly lacking in recent weeks, bolted out to a 17-7 lead behind the 3-point shooting of Beck, who finished just one point shy of his career-high for points, and center J.K. Edwards, who scored six of his seven points in the first 4:12 of action. The Rebels held on to most of that lead the rest of the half and led, 32-28, at intermission.

But San Diego State (12-12, 3-6), behind of front line play of senior center Aerick Sanders (16 points, 6 rebounds) and freshman forward Marcus Slaughter (13 points, 15 rebounds), opened the second half with a 24-10 run to go ahead, 52-42, with 9:36 left.

That's when Blassingame, who also had a game-high 10 assists, and Beck took over.

The duo combined for 19 of UNLV's final 26 points. Blassingame sank four consecutive free throws in the final 28.2 seconds, the last two coming with 16.9 seconds left that put the Rebels aheads by three, 66-63, and proved to be the game-winners.

"We hung in there and played hard," Blassingame said. "Coach Jay (Spoonhour) said as long as we stayed together and cheered for each other ... we haven't been doing that all year.

"But everybody was cheering for each other tonight and everybody came out and played hard."

"We were down 10points but we didn't give up," added Beck, who was 9-of-12 from the floor and also had three steals. "We just kept fighting and fighting."

"We didn't get down on ourselves and start looking around and blaming each other," forward Odartey Blankson said. "Instead, we just continued to play. Jerel did a good job of getting everybody involved today.

"Hopefully we can build on this."

The Rebels return to action on Saturday night when they host Colorado State at 7:30 p.m.

REBELS NOTES: UNLV, which turned the ball over 22 times in its first meeting with the Aztecs in San Diego, finished with just 13 turnovers on Tuesday night. ... San Diego State had 19 offensive rebounds but held just a 16-12 edge in second chance points. ... Beck's 25 points were just one shy of his career-high 26 points set against Occidental College. ... Blankson finished with just 12 points on 4-of-15 shooting.