Columnist Dean Juipe: Rebels’ diamond defense lacking down the stretch

Dean Juipe

Monday, May 10, 2004 | 9:12 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.

The game had been over for 10 minutes and Buddy Gouldsmith's voice continued to rise as he addressed his assembled team in center field.

The Rebels had played poorly and Gouldsmith wasn't reminding his guys to give their mothers his regards.

More likely, he told them what the 125 spectators in the stands at Wilson Field were thinking Sunday as UNLV lost the finale of a three-game series to San Diego State by a 14-8 score: that the Rebels looked dreadful defensively, slow afoot and pitching challenged.

In fact, other than their ability to hit the baseball -- which has been a steady attribute all season -- the Rebels looked to be anything but the first- place team in the Mountain West Conference, which they somehow still are despite a weekend in which they surrendered an unholy 38 runs.

"We're much better than we showed," Gouldsmith said later, having regained his perspective if not his even keel. "We're continuing to hit the ball well, but unfortunately our concentration level wasn't what it should have been today and we had too many mental breakdowns."

I'll say.

UNLV was charged with three errors but would have had two more if not for a generous scorekeeper; its pitchers also allowed 17 hits, three walks and three wild pitches in a shoddy performance; its left fielder ran into its center fielder on a key third-inning mishap that would have been entirely avoidable with a little communication; and its collective slumber allowed SDSU to pull off a key double steal on reliever Ben Scheinbaum's first pitch in the eighth inning.

It was a bad baseball game that capped a bad weekend for the Rebels, who had four errors in a 13-9 Friday loss and, supposedly, a number of miscues as well in Saturday's 18-11 victory.

No wonder there was hardly anyone at the game. It was 3 1/2 hours of brutality on a field that's looking a little worn and in a stadium whose scoreboard is on the fritz.

Had the game dragged on any further, I'd be taking back every bad thing I said about the Arena Football League in this space a week ago.

Of course this UNLV baseball team is easy to peg: It has good hitting but not much else. The Rebels are averaging 9.5 runs per game, which is sixth best in the nation, but its pitching staff offsets those gains with its tendency to be lit up as well.

The Rebels are 16-7 in league play and 29-19 overall with seven games remaining in the regular season.

Twenty-two times this season the Rebels have surrendered at least 10 runs and there's nothing flukish about it, as the all important innings-pitched-to-hits ratio suggests. In 431 innings this season, UNLV pitchers have been touched -- make that hammered -- for 517 hits.

Even taking aluminum bats into consideration -- and one Aztec, Jordan Swaydan, hit a ball to the warning track with only one hand on the bat in the ninth inning, just to let you know -- no team can survive, let alone prosper, allowing so many baserunners. Given their losing records to SDSU and fellow contender New Mexico this season, the Rebels are looking like a team that will outscore lesser opposition but be outscored against the better ballclubs.

But neither Gouldsmith nor his team has reason to dwell on the negatives despite the difficult weekend he and it experienced.

"The thing I told them was that we've played well enough to be in first place and that they've just got to flush this game down the drain," he said. "I thought we got San Diego State's best effort all weekend, without giving ours.

"They took advantage of everything we gave them."

San Diego State, managed by ex-San Diego Padres hitting star Tony Gwynn, scored five times in the first inning off UNLV starter Matt Luca and never trailed in upping its record to 14-8 in league play and 27-26 overall.

It closed the game with seven runs over the final three innings to withstand the 15-hit attack that the Rebels were mounting against three SDSU pitchers.

The best thing that can be said might be this: UNLV has scored 458 runs this season while allowing 347, so maybe it can cover its mistakes with its own blistering offensive abilities. It's a formula that has worked thus far -- the team's pitching, speed and defensive shortcomings aside.

Yeah, that's what Buddy was telling the boys out in center field after the game. The heck with pitching and defense, let's just keep circling the bases and hope all's well that ends well.