Ron Kantowski on what could have been a day in the media spotlight for UNLV basketball

Monday, Nov. 27, 2006 | 7:19 a.m.

The amazing thing about a Saturday night on which the UNLV basketball team played second fiddle in its own hometown is not that it happened. But that UNLV allowed it to happen.

It comes as no shock to those who have watched the once mighty Rebel program surrender its place from alongside the Final Four bluebloods that the marquee college basketball game was played across town, at Allen Fieldhouse West - aka the Orleans Arena. It was there that Kansas and Florida traded baskets deep into overtime in front of a raucous crowd composed mostly of blue-and-red clad Jayhawks' fans.

It was a special night of college basketball, about as good as it gets without an office bracket pool.

Kansas won, upsetting the top-ranked Gators 82-80 in the finals of the made-for-TV Las Vegas Invitational. I am quite sure that when the Las Vegas Wranglers show up for their morning skate today, that haunting ROCK CHALK JAY HAWK chant still will be reverberating off the walls of the long hallway leading from the casino to the arena.

The atmosphere was so electric that they could have shut down the big turbines out at Hoover Dam for a couple of hours and lit Boulder City and half of Henderson with the man-made power generated by the KU fans.

With Dick Vitale sitting courtside watching all those PTPers strut their stuffs, it had the feel of a Final Four game, with the main difference being that any seat in the Orleans affords a great view of the action.

Former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian was sitting behind the Kansas bench. You had better believe that Tark wouldn't have shied away from hooping it up with the Jayhawks and Gators. Baseball legend Greg Maddux also was in the house.

It makes you wonder why UNLV wasn't.

When they should have been calling "winners" at the Orleans, the Rebels were scrimmaging San Francisco at a half-empty Thomas & Mack Center, where the price of admission was a can of corn. Or green beans. I could understand it if Bill Russell and K.C. Jones were still playing for the Dons. But they used up their eligibility 50 years ago.

Chris Spencer, the promoter of the Las Vegas Invitational, said the Rebels have a standing invitation to play in it or in the Holiday Classic, a second tournament that will be held at the Orleans Dec. 22 and 23. Bob Huggins and Kansas State, along with USC and Wichita State, which knocked off No. 6 LSU Saturday, are the headliners of that one.

"Let's just say I've been calling them for six years," Spencer said. "They're not here."

He told me Charlie Spoonhour, who preceded Lon Kruger as UNLV coach, had committed to play in one of his previous Las Vegas tournaments, which prior to this year when the NCAA lifted its ban on playing ball in an arena connected to a sports book, were held at Valley High. A few days later, Spoonhour resigned.

When I asked UNLV athletic director Mike Hamrick about the Rebels' reluctance to line up against the likes of Kansas and Florida, I got the usual song and dance.

Before the NCAA rescinded its "2-in-4" rule, teams could play in tournaments such as Spencer's only twice in a four-year period. Hamrick said UNLV was opposed to letting other teams use the arena in the years the Rebels couldn't participate.

I guess he feared Huggins' guys might swipe the towels or something.

But what about this year? Why wouldn't the Rebels choose to pick up four games, including a pair against top-notch opponents, that count only one against the 27-game scheduling limit?

Too late, Hamrick said. The Rebels had already made plans for their own tournament.

Instead of giving local fans the chance to see how the team stacks up against Florida and Kansas, the decision was made to pad its record against South Florida, Norfolk State and Texas A&M Corpus Christi, which apparently was a late replacement for the Washington Generals.

If I were Spencer, I'd probably tell UNLV to take a hike. But he told me that despite having North Carolina and Louisville on board for 2007 and Kentucky and UCLA the year after that, he'd still love to have the Rebels join the party.

Local basketball fans can only hope this is another matter that Chancellor Jim Rogers will address in a follow-up memo about what's wrong with the athletic program.