Spoonhour still part of UNLV family

Thursday, Feb. 17, 2005 | 9:38 a.m.

During Saturday's Wichita State-Bradley telecast in Peoria, Ill., someone fed analyst Charlie Spoonhour the UNLV-San Diego State score.

The program that for health reasons Spoonhour suddenly left a year ago this morning trailed the Aztecs by 15 or 16 points.

"I thought, 'Shoot,' " Spoonhour said Monday before catching a flight from McCarran International Airport to Oklahoma.

After Bradley shocked the Shockers and Spoonhour returned to his hotel in St. Louis, he caught some jubilation on a television while passing a lounge. He saw a familiar uniform.

"And I'm looking at that and thinking, 'That looks like our uniforms,' " Spoonhour said. "The next thing I know, we got a win. They showed (Jerel) Blassingame shooting a three, then it looked like our freshman (Curtis Terry) shot a three. It was a heck of a deal."

Overcoming a 10-point deficit against SDSU in the last half minute to win in overtime marked the UNLV victory as one of the most dramatic comebacks in the game's history.

Spoonhour sounds as if he never left the program -- saying "we," "us" and "our" -- because his passion for many people in and around it, the university and city hasn't dissipated.

"You miss associating with people, that's the main thing," said Spoonhour, 65. "I don't miss the actual work day, or the work week or the work month. I don't miss that. I don't see as many people I like as often as I like.

"But, yeah, I like everybody there. I didn't leave with any animosity or bad feelings toward anyone. I like it when (Michael) Umeh does well, and I'm thrilled when (Odartey Blankson) hits a big three, and Blassingame and (Andy) Hannan play well."

That he departed so abruptly on Feb. 17, 2004, held no significance for Spoonhour, who joked that he just hopes to wake up Friday morning. Then Saturday ... then Sunday ...

"I don't ever ... I have a terrible memory," he said. "I don't think about it. I just go ahead and try to figure out what I'm doing tomorrow. 'Today' seems important to me right now."

Spoonhour has vague recollections of awaking that Tuesday and generally not feeling very well. Wearing slacks and a sports coat, he drove to his physician's office that morning instead of the Thomas & Mack Center.

"Obviously, I didn't feel very good," Spoonhour said, "but I don't remember the feeling."

Mike Hamrick had been UNLV's athletic director for six months when Spoonhour, as he usually did, stuck his head around Hamrick's office doorway later that morning and asked his boss if he had a minute to chat.

Hamrick waved Spoonhour in, and Spoonhour said he had a problem. Well, Hamrick said, let's see if I can help you with it.

"He said, for health reasons, that he just couldn't coach anymore," Hamrick said. "Then I kind of said, 'You know, Charlie, what's really the problem? What do you need?' He said, 'No, Mike. I'm serious.' Then we got into it. Wow. A year ago (today)? Time flies."

Hamrick remembers being surprised.

"But he didn't look good. That's documented," Hamrick said. "He said he had some personal and health issues, and he wanted to step down immediately. We worked it out. We had a game that night. I asked him if he could coach it, and he said, 'No.'

"He's such a class act, and I asked him what he would do if he were me, referring to (the position). He just said, 'Do what you need to do. I just have to get away from it.' "

Hamrick and Spoonhour then met with the UNLV assistants, when and where Hamrick chose Spoonhour's son Jay to serve as the interim coach for that night's game against SDSU and for the remainder of the season.

The Rebels beat the Aztecs, 68-65, at the Mack.

"Charlie had zero influence on the decision that Jay would be the interim coach," Hamrick said. "I told Jay about it, then we met with the players that afternoon and told them we were moving forward."

Issues related to stress and his heart were reported as Spoonhour's primary health concerns. Over nearly three seasons at UNLV -- especially in 2002-03 -- Spoonhour spent many sleepless nights either reading, concocting strategy or digesting video tape.

Spoonhour had also undergone several treatments for skin cancer.

Weeks earlier, a reporter for the Sun interviewed Spoonhour as assistant athletic trainer Dave Tomchek removed stitches from some of those afflicted areas on Spoonhour's body in a private trainer's room.

Spoonhour, though, left the team quietly. There was no exit press conference, and he asked for privacy in a brief statement. He went to Florida to watch the St. Louis Cardinals in spring training.

He gave his first public comments about leaving UNLV to the Sun on March 25.

"I'm doing fine," Spoonhour said then, "and I appreciate all the nice thoughts."

As he left his Summerlin home Monday for McCarran, Spoonhour was again reluctant to talk about that day one year ago.

"The truth of the matter was that I felt like I was more ill than I turned out to be," he said. "Although I still have some squiggly lines when they do the (medical) tests, as far as dropping over tomorrow ...

"(A year ago), I just didn't feel very good. I had lost a lot of weight."

He said he did not feel better "for maybe a month or two."

Spoonhour wanted to keep his skin cancer private, then he relented when asked if any personal advice about sun protection might benefit others.

He has always considered himself to be an outdoor person, which means an abundance of sun in Las Vegas, or when watching spring training in Arizona or Florida, or regular season baseball in St. Louis.

He had always relished sun-splashed vacations in Cancun.

"If you do it properly," Spoonhour said, "which I have never done ... "

A former lifeguard, Spoonhour only applied baby oil and an iodine solution on his skin, if anything, to look like "some bronze god."

"I feel like a Bozo," he said. "All things in moderation are good, which I've never been good at ... the sun being one of them, and just the idea of doing things we all know are correct skin care. I think people are a little more aware than we were in the 1950s and 1960s.

"It's only taken 40 years to wake us up."

Hamrick replaced Spoonhour with Lon Kruger, who has deep Midwest roots and has always respected the way Spoonhour's teams at Southwest Missouri State and Saint Louis played tight defense.

From the start, Kruger invited Spoonhour to return to the program. Spoonhour has attended a few practice sessions and games, courtesy of season tickets that Hamrick provided for him.

"To have him interested in staying in touch and being at practice, we want that and we very much appreciate him," Kruger said. "He's been very supportive. He's called several times, after tough losses and good wins.

"And he called after Saturday's game. We had a good discussion about that, how crazy of a finish that was. Wild things can happen."

Spoonhour was assigned eight Oklahoma games, including Wednesday's in Norman against Nebraska, on the Sooner Sports Network, and he will work an "ESPN Classic" game next Wednesday in St. Louis that pits the Billikens against Alabama-Birmingham.

He'll provide color for Missouri Valley games through that league's tournament semifinals and remain busy after basketball by providing color for radio and television broadcasts of the Cardinals' Double-A team in Springfield, Mo., at Hammons Field.

Last season, Spoonhour worked a dozen radio and all six television broadcasts of the Triple-A 51s' games in Las Vegas. Don Logan, the team's president and general manager, has invited Spoonhour to do more of the same this season.

"It's up to him," Logan said. "Coach is always welcomed. He's a huge baseball fan, he's a wonderful guy, he's pleasant to be around and he's genuinely funny. He makes people feel good. He's the best.

"It's easy to see why he was so successful for so long, with his personality."

Hamrick believes that Spoonhour, 54-31 at UNLV, hasn't been given proper credit by many for stabilizing the hoops program, even though Hamrick knows Spoonhour doesn't need such acknowledgement.

"I believe Lon's program," Hamrick said, "is better off because of Charlie Spoonhour."

Spoonhour begins his second full year of retirement Friday morning, and he said he feels appreciated for keeping the UNLV program from sinking during probation. Then again, he only talks with friends.

"Part of that is due to Lon," Spoonhour said. "But this is a good place, and it's only going to get better and better. (Jerry Tarkanian) has tried to help me and Lon, by getting him and his friends involved again, and I think it has a chance to really take off.

"With Lon, I think it will. No question."

With that, Spoonhour hurried to a plane that would whisk him to yet another basketball game. It seems as if his life is as hectic as ever, then he paused.

"My clothes," Spoonhour said, "fit much better this spring."