Tuesday, March 15, 2005 | 9:41 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
Having seen way too many of them to count -- which is a pretty good indication of just how far the UNLV basketball program has slipped during the past decade -- I never thought I would refer to an NIT berth as a lovely parting gift.
I'll probably regret saying it, but the Rebels should take the home game of Concentration -- Thursday's 9 p.m. Little Dance step against Arizona State -- and whatever else Don Pardo is offering and be happy that somebody is still thinking about them.
I used to believe the Not Interested Tournament was basically a waste of time and money, especially since the advent of the satellite dish and those Mega March Madness subscription packages that for $59 enable you to look live on the Hartford Civic Center, or wherever No. 1 seeds beat the living tar out of No. 16 seeds on the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament while some team from the Big Sky Conference messes with Bob Huggins' mind.
I began to look at it differently last year when the Lady Rebels accepted their annual bid to the women's NIT and ran with it. UNLV edged Arizona State, Rice and Western Kentucky in consecutive home games, went on the road and beat Iowa State from the mighty Big 12 and then lost at Creighton in the championship game.
The Omaha Civic Auditorium, the decrepit part-time home of Tiny Archibald and the hyphenated Kansas City-Omaha Kings, was packed and rockin' that night. And if it weren't for the Arena Football League goalposts distracting free-throw shooters at both ends and that the place kind of smelled like Sam Lacey's old Converse All-Stars, you would have sworn it was all a pretty big deal.
You could almost see the Lady Rebels, once they got over the slight snub from the NCAA tournament committee, come together as a team at a time when you least expected it. With their nucleus comprised of underclassmen, that little postseason run was something for the Lady Rebels to feel good about and build upon and also put them back on the national radar with a tiny blip, but a blip nonetheless.
UNLV received votes for the Top 25 in this year's preseason poll, which it probably wouldn't have gotten had the season finished in Denver at the conference tournament instead of some creaky old arena in downtown Omaha where the great Bob Gibson used to play.
Not coincidentally, the Lady Rebels' 4-1 record in the B-main, as they say in auto racing, probably clinched the contract extension coach Regina Miller had been seeking.
Lon Kruger is pretty well set financially and has all the country club memberships he can swing a 7-iron at, so personal gain is not an issue for the UNLV men's coach. But ever since he juggled the lineup about a month ago and his team began winning games, the Rebels, like last year's Lady Rebels, also have become a young team capable of creating a little esprit de corps while hooping it up in front of a lot of empty seats.
That wasn't the case last year, when many of the veteran players voted for root canal surgery over accepting an NIT bid. Although their hearts were never in it, the Rebels decided to play anyway and Boise State made them look like a bunch of potato farmers. The Rebels' 84-69 defeat might have been the most uninspired effort up that way since Keanu Reeves' portrayal of a street hustler in "My Own Private Idaho."
But based on these Rebels' gritty effort down the stretch, when they closed the regular season with six victories in seven games, and at last week's conference tournament, where they found a way to beat Wyoming and came from 22 points down to give Andrew Bogut and Utah a scare, the NIT is a chance to continue salvaging.
The guys coming back next year seem fired up about playing the home version of the game, Odartey Blankson said he still has a few more fallaway jumpers he'd like to try and even the sullen Romel Beck seems semi-interested in playing some more 'ball, after his thrilling 19-point effort off the pine against the Utes at the Pepsi Center.
Check with me again about midnight Thursday. But the NIT seems like a pretty good opportunity for a team that just a month ago seemed to have run out of them.
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