Columnist Ron Kantowski: UNR is a hoops power, seriously

Tuesday, April 12, 2005 | 11:05 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Call it a pre, preseason poll, but CBS SportsLine.com already has released a Top 25 for next college basketball season, which is kind of like putting up Christmas decorations on the Fourth of July.

The Top 10 pretty much comprised the usual suspects and one interloper who not that long ago would have had to break into NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis to put fingerprints anywhere near the championship trophy.

For what it's worth, SportsLine has Oklahoma as its pre, preseason No. 1, followed by Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina, Louisville, Connecticut, Gonzaga, Arizona, Villanova and Nevada, as in Nevada hyphen Reno.

Nevada-Reno? Number 10 in the nation? The Nevada-Reno against which UNLV holds a 48-18 series edge? The Nevada-Reno that Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon and Greg Anthony used to beat by 20 points with one arm tied behind their backs? The Nevada-Reno that a lot of people around here not so long ago thought the Rebels should drop from the schedule?

Yup, that Nevada-Reno.

During the 20-year period from 1974-94, the Rebels and Wolf Pack met 28 times on the hardwood. UNLV won 26 times. Only three of the 26 victories were decided by fewer than 10 points. But of the 14 games played between the rivals since 1994, UNLV has won just six.

It's time to admit the unadmittable. Somewhere, The Devil must be scraping ice off his windshield because Nevada-Reno has usurped UNLV to become the king of college basketball in Nevada.

A few years ago, the only time UNR would have been mentioned in the same sentence as Duke, Kentucky and North Carolina is on one of those "which does not belong" questions on an ACT test. That was before Trent Johnson arrived on Virginia Street and methodically began turning UNR into a basketball school.

Johnson is gone now, having returned to his alma mater at Stanford, but the Wolf Pack show no signs of returning to anonymity under his successor, Mark Fox, one of Snyder's former assistants.

"Is that right?" Fox asked the Reno Gazette-Journal upon being notified of his team's inclusion in SportsLine's pre, preseason Top 10. "Holy, moly. For once, I'm hoping those guys are right."

It has been five years since the Rebels last made it to the NCAA tournament and, if you've got a memory like Dumbo, 14 years since they last won a tournament game. If there was a statute of limitations on a basketball reputation, UNLV's would certainly be up.

The Wolf Pack's, meanwhile, continues to grow. UNR has gone dancing each of the past two years, making it to the Sweet 16 in 2004 and to the second round this year, where it played Illinois tough before losing by 12.

A couple of weeks before the brackets were announced, UNR made its first-ever appearance in the Associated Press' Top 25 poll. Not even the most devout Wolf Pack fans could have seen that coming before the arrival of Johnson and his assistant coaches.

"It was all Trent Johnson, Mark Fox and David Carter," said West Coast college basketball guru Frank Burlison of the Long Beach Press-Telegram and FoxSports.com. "Nothing happened before that that would have had you believe the program would get to these heights."

Burlison said he always thought Johnson could coach, especially if he had the right players. Still, he said, "It wasn't an overnight thing, it was a gradual-type thing."

It began when Johnson signed Kirk Snyder, the star of UNR's Sweet 16 team, now coming off the bench for the Utah Jazz. Then UNR added stalwarts such as Nick Fazekas and Kevinn Pinkney and key role players such as Todd Okeson, the little guard who shot baskets from so far out they should have counted four points.

"They got a little lucky with a guy like that," Burlison said of Okeson. "But Fox is an astute recruiter, and as long as he can go out and get the players, they have a chance to be dominant in their league (WAC), like a Gonzaga."

But Burlison also believes UNLV's day is coming, or coming again.

"Lon Kruger has proven he's a great coach. It's just a matter of getting the correct players, and that takes a little time," he said.

"It's all cyclical. It's almost getting to where a dynasty in college basketball lasts two years. It's just who hits on the recruits."

But Burlison said it is ironic that a football man might be most responsible for turning UNR from basketball farce into basketball force.

"Chris Ault or whoever it was five or six years ago made a very prudent decision (in hiring Trent Johnson)," he said of the former Wolf Pack athletic director who has returned to the sidelines to coach the football team.

While it's probably too early to say that Nevada-Reno is the new Gonzaga, the bad news for Rebels fans is that if Fox is the new Trent Johnson, he probably won't be moving on anytime soon.

Fox's wife Cindy is UNR's associate athletic director. My guess is with all that job security, he won't be exploring other opportunities for a while.

So the Rebels had better untie those arms from behind their backs. This isn't your father's Nevada-Reno. And it certainly isn't Jerry Tarkanian's Nevada-Reno.

This is the Nevada-Reno that, face it Rebels fans, UNLV should aspire to be.