Ron Kantowski on the return to the Glory Days of championship basketball as UNLV brings back the legends of its program

Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006 | 7:08 a.m.

The prodigal sons returned home Tuesday night. Old Rebels. Fat Rebels. Thin Rebels. Rebels with dreadlocks. Bald Rebels. Rebels who could still run. And many more Rebels who couldn't.

More than 30 former Rebels huffed and puffed and one of them, Warren Rosegreen, nearly brought the house down - as well as the rims - with two tomahawk dunks that would have done Jay Silverheels proud. Those were the highlights of the first semiofficial UNLV Legends Alumni Game held before the Rebels' semiofficial season opener against Dixie State College on the night Greg Anthony's jersey was retired.

But for those of us who still remember the program's halcyon days - and it's getting to where you need to take a little ginkgo to recall them - seeing all those old Rebels in one place at one time was better than watching Bruce Springsteen throw that speedball by you.

Boring stories of Glory Days? Not a chance, Mister. I hadn't seen so many Rebels having so much fun since Jerry Tarkanian cleared his bench against UC Irvine back in '89.

This wouldn't have happened 10 or 15 years ago. A lot of water flowed under UNLV's bridge when Tark was basically run out of town by his own administration. When it finally subsided, any loyalty his former players felt for their old school was left in ruins on the rocks.

After his No. 50 jersey was raised to the rafters, Anthony, who had more guts under his hood than an old Plymouth Barracuda - who can forget him leading the Rebels to the 1990 NCAA championship with his broken jaw wired shut? - spilled some, telling the modest crowd that he will always be a Rebel.

But in a less public setting afterward, he said there was a time when he wouldn't cop to it.

"Honestly, yes," he said. "It seemed there was an anti-Tarkanian sentiment that went on for more than a decade. You cannot take away what he meant to basketball and this city and not to embrace that was a travesty."

That's what Charlie Spoonhour thought. Spoonhour was the fourth UNLV coach since Tark's ouster but the first to acknowledge the Rebels' basketball legacy, at least with the cameras and tape recorders rolling. Then Lon Kruger, his successor, took it to the next step. If Spoonhour laid the groundwork, then Kruger is building a bridge linking the program's past with its present and hopefully, its future, with events such as the Legends game.

"That's what UNLV is all about," Kruger said as he watched the former Rebel greats and not so greats lumber up and down the court. "So how does that (embracing the past) hurt me?"

Answer: It doesn't. When it came to healing old wounds for some old Rebels, Tuesday's basketball game and golf outing and Monday's cocktail reception was more helpful than a dozen rolls of former trainer Jerry Koloskie's athletic tape.

"It was great just to see everybody," Tarkanian said as he munched on a postgame meal with Dr. Brad Rothermel, his former athletic director. "You were here. Those were some great teams. And these are some great, great people."

My only problem with Tuesday's game is that the execution wasn't as good as the idea behind it. Scheduling an alumni game on a Tuesday when people were still trying to get home for dinner or standing in line to vote didn't seem like such a good idea. Neither did having the old Rebels take the court in uniforms that lacked names and numbers .

"Next time we do this," I heard one overweight ex-Rebel say to a follicle-challenged teammate, "we gotta get more people in here."

But then Tina Kunzer-Murphy, the executive director of the Las Vegas Bowl and a smaller link to the Rebels' past, owing to her stint as an athletic administrator, bounded down the stairs toward the player benches. She was hugging everyone in sight and flashing a smile that had nothing to do with Brigham Young becoming bowl eligible.

"This is almost like the old days," she said.

You could tell by the wink of an older girl's eye that UNLV's glory days hadn't passed her by.