Rebels looking for a little payback during trip to CSU

Steve Guiremand

Monday, Jan. 26, 2004 | 10:04 a.m.

FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- UNLV players were still munching on their postgame pizzas in the locker room following Saturday afternoon's 76-62 victory at Wyoming when the the topic of tonight's game with Colorado State here at Moby Arena was mentioned.

Talk about bringing on your bouts of indigestion.

It has been a little more than 10 months since the Rams overcame a 10-point second half deficit to stun the Rebels, 62-61, on Brian Greene's 12-foot leaning jumper with 5.7 seconds remaining in the Mountain West Conference tournament title game at the Thomas & Mack Center, snatching away UNLV's NCAA tournament dreams in the process.

The Rebels (10-5, 1-2) now get a chance to deliver a little payback against Colorado State (9-8, 1-3), which was was considered a darkhorse candidate to win the MWC title this year.

"You're going to remember that game for the rest of your life," said UNLV senior guard Demetrius Hunter, one of four lettermen and three returning starters from last year's squad. "That stopped us from going to the place where everybody wants to get."

"We've been remembering that for about a year or so," added senior center J.K. Edwards. "(It's been) a whole year of pain and pressure of not making it to the NCAA tournament because of that one loss, that one shot."

Even newcomers such as junior guard Romel Beck, who was playing for Los Angeles City College during last year's loss to the Rams, knows there is a lot at stake for Hunter, Edwards, James Peters and sophomore forward Louis Amundson, who was redshirting last season.

"That was the only tournament game that I watched," Beck said. "I'm pretty sure the seniors will want to come out and get this one. This would be a good win for them after what happened last year."

It also would be huge for this year's UNLV squad to come home with a Front Range sweep of the Rams and Wyoming, something that has never been accomplished in school history.

Should Utah (15-4, 3-1) find a way to slow red-hot Air Force (13-2, 3-0) tonight down I-25 in Colorado Springs while UNLV knocks off the Rams, the Rebels would find themselves just one game behind the leaders in the loss column in the Mountain West Conference standings with six of their last 10 league games at the Thomas & Mack.

"I'm sure (the players) know exactly where we are with everything," UNLV coach Charlie Spoonhour said.

Although many coaches predicted a 10-4 mark might be good enough to win the MWC this year, Spoonhour is among those who believes maybe even a 9-5 mark might be good enough for a share of the crown.

"The only people who didn't get the memo was Air Force," Spoonhour said. "This league is supposed to be a hard league and Joe (Scott) hasn't seen that yet.

"You can't be too high or two low about a game. As silly as it sounds, it's almost like you have to take a football approach. It's one game at a time and away you go."

"It's a tough conference," Beck said. "Anything can happen. We're just coming out and trying to play hard. Most of the time when we come out and play hard, we're in good shape."

"We know we can still do a lot of things in this league because it's so wide open," Edwards added. "We've seen a lot of the big teams falling already. You've just got to try and be consistent. We just have to keep working hard. There's still a lot of games left to be played."

Starting with tonight's contest against the Rams.

"We do have revenge to give them," Hunter said. "You're going to remember what happened last year for the rest of your life. It hurt. But we've got another chance to (go to the NCAA tournament) again this year. It's my last time. We just have to go out and play."

Sophomore forward Louis Amundson had five points in a 11-second span in the second half that helped up UNLV's lead to 16 points, 51-35. Amundson played with his right knee tightly wrapped following a Friday night practice collision with Edwards.