Rebels relish role of ‘dog

Friday, June 4, 2004 | 9:54 a.m.

STANFORD, Calif. -- Contrary to what you may have read or heard, the UNLV baseball team won't be trying to shake up the world in tonight's NCAA regional first-round game against No. 1 Stanford, just its side of the bracket.

"Listening to the number of calls and the input I've received, it almost seems like -- and I hope Stanford is looking at it this way, too -- I'm not even sure why we're showing up," said coach Buddy Gouldsmith, whose Rebels (37-22) will learn how they measure up against the nation's best at 6 p.m. at Sunken Diamond on the Stanford campus. Long Beach State (36-19) and St. John's (36-21) will meet in the first game at 2 p.m.

"But that's why we've got to go out and play the game," Gouldsmith said. "I know our guys are excited about the challenge."

If Gouldsmith thinks the Cardinal players are looking past the Rebels ... well, he may be right. Of the four who were quoted on the school's Web site, only one, outfielder Brian Hall, so much as mentioned UNLV, and that was only to say he didn't know a whole lot about the Rebels or for that matter, St. John's.

Their focus seems to be on a potential second-round matchup with postseason rival Long Beach State and its 6-foot-7 pitcher Jared Weaver, who is 14-1 with a 1.68 earned-run average.

"Well, I guess it was no surprise that we got Long Beach State here at this regional," said Stanford sophomore first baseman John Mayberry Jr., the son of the former major league slugger. "We've had Long Beach here for three years in a row in the postseason. It's just business as usual. We just have to play well to win. We're going to be real focused."

Gouldsmith said if the Rebels can force Stanford (44-12) to focus and play well before it runs into Long Beach, it will be a huge step in the right direction for his program.

If the Rebels swing the bats the way they have -- UNLV is second in the NCAA with 10.2 runs per game -- it's possible they could even make the game interesting.

"The one thing we've tried to do is not harp too much on the fact that, hey, we're playing Stanford and they're the No. 1 team in the nation and it's going to be an uphill battle," Gouldsmith said. "Offensively, we might be able to scare some guys early in the game. If we swing the bat early against whatever guy they roll out there, then we might be able to shake some things up and scare some people."

It wouldn't be the first time that happened. Just last week, the Rebels pounced on Air Force for eight runs in the first inning.

"We've done it about a half-dozen times this year," Gouldsmith said. "We scored some runs early against (No. 9) Cal State Fullerton in the very first game of the season and I think they were kinda taken aback. It was like, 'ooh, these guys can swing the bat and we're going to have to play well.'

"If we can do that and give our pitcher (left-hander Jake Vose) a little confidence with a run or two on the board, it might help a little bit."

It also might help the Rebels to remember the not-too-distant past. It was only a week ago that lowly Air Force, mired in a 34-game losing streak, sent Brigham Young packing in the Mountain West tournament after dropping six in a row to the Cougars the previous week.

And major upsets at the national level, although not as frequent, do happen. Gouldsmith and UNLV pitching coach Chad Sutter recalled Harvard knocking off heavily favored Tulane in 1998 on a late three-run homer when they were with the Green Wave as an assistant coach and player.

Eric Nielsen, the UNLV outfielder who was selected Thursday to the Louisville Slugger All-American team by Collegiate Baseball Newspaper, said he was impressed by Stanford, but not intimidated. Perhaps that is because he played against the nucleus of this year's Cardinal team in the Cape Cod League last summer.

"They put their uniforms on the same way as we do," Neilsen said.

The biggest difference, of course, is that theirs say "Stanford" across the front.

"They're quality ballplayers, they play the game well," said Nielsen, hitting .410 with 16 homers and 86 RBIs. "So we're going to have to play just as well in order to win."

And unfortunately for the Rebels, if they are somehow successful in shaking up the college baseball world once, they'll most likely have to do it again by Sunday, the nature of the beast in a double-elimination tournament.

Friday's winners will meet at 3 p.m. Saturday, with the losers tangling in an elimination game at 11 a.m. The winner of the Saturday morning game and the loser of the afternoon contest will meet at 7 p.m in the second elimination game.

The winner of that game will move on to Sunday's 1 p.m. championship game. A second championship game, if necessary, would follow at 5 p.m.