Tougher schedule would lift Rebels

By Ron Kantowski

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 | 2 a.m.

A common thought among the amateur psychologists who have been trying to explain how a UNLV team picked to finish first in the Mountain West Conference instead finished fifth is that the Rebels were never as good as their 12-2 nonconference record suggested.

Even their coach thought there might be something to that. Lon Kruger said it was hard to get the players to listen in practice when he thought they were doing something average while they thought they were doing something good, such as beating Texas-Pan American by 25 points.

Well, if that’s all it was, then what ailed the Rebels is easily remedied. Stop playing Texas-Pan American and start playing Texas.

The Rebels should take a page from Gonzaga’s book, or at least its schedule.

Kruger should call Mark Few and ask him how he gets all of those teams from the power conferences to schedule his team. Heck, he should call Few and try to schedule Gonzaga.

Here’s who Gonzaga — big fish, small pond — played in its nonconference games: Montana State-Billings, Idaho, Oklahoma State, Maryland, Tennessee, Indiana, Washington State, Arizona, Texas Southern, Connecticut, Portland State, Utah, Tennessee (again) and Memphis. Most were on the road.

Here’s who UNLV — decent-sized fish, slightly larger pond — played in its optional games: San Diego, Texas-Pan American, Northern Arizona, North Carolina A&T, Texas-El Paso, California, Cincinnati, Fresno State, UNR, Western Michigan, Santa Clara, Arizona, Southern Utah and Louisville. Most were at home.

For every Arizona and Louisville there were two teams with a hyphen or an ampersand or a direction in their names. These are the kind of games where they give you a free balcony ticket if you bring a can of pork and beans to the game. Too many of those can make you soft in the middle (and on the perimeter, too).

Gonzaga has a good big man and a good small man and a No. 4 seed in the South Region of the NCAA Tournament.

UNLV does not have a good big man and was seeded fifth in the NIT’s Creighton bracket, which, no offense to the great Bob Gibson’s hometown, is not where you strive to be at this time of the year.

There’s a lot more to it than the teams you play, because if you put the starting fives from the Mountain West’s two NCAA qualifiers and San Diego State on the asphalt at Sunset Park and went shirts and skins, you might take the Rebels’ Tre’Von Willis over BYU counterpart Jackson Emery, and that’s about it.

(Maybe this is a minority opinion, but I believe that whereas the rest of the Mountain West got better, the Rebels pretty much stayed the same, and in the end, a lot of the other teams simply had better players. Especially San Diego State.)

But if the Rebels’ problems are more psychological than physical, perhaps they would have benefited from playing Gonzaga’s schedule and taking a few early-season lumps. Twenty wins are like rushing for 1,000 yards in pro football. It’s not such a big deal anymore. Not when you start playing games against schools with ampersands in their names in the middle of November.

Utah also played a pretty formidable schedule, which included Oklahoma, Gonzaga and LSU. The Utes suffered five early-season losses. So whereas it appeared they came on strong to win a share of the Mountain West regular-season title, the truth is they were probably pretty good all along, but didn’t have a lot to show for it.

Now they have a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament to show for it.

Those early-season games probably helped make them better. They certainly made them tougher. Put it this way: If Utah were to play Southwest Baptist again, my money would be on Luke Nevill, provided I had a ladder.

The Rebels are playing in the Rainbow Classic in Hawaii next year, which probably won’t help them a whole lot in RPI and strength of schedule — if the field is anything like this year’s. Buffalo beat Colorado State in the final, in case you had forgotten, or never knew in the first place.

Reportedly, the Rebels are trying to schedule UCLA again, which would definitely help them in RPI and strength of schedule.

Anyway, just for grins, I googled the nonconference schedule from the Rebels’ 1989-90 national championship season. UNLV played Loyola Marymount, California, Kansas, DePaul, Oklahoma, Iowa, Arkansas, Temple, LSU, North Carolina State, Oklahoma State, Arizona and Louisville that year.

The Rebels lost to Kansas, Oklahoma, LSU (and to New Mexico State and UC Santa Barbara in the Big West). But I bet if you check David Butler’s backside, you’ll find some battle scars that still haven’t healed.

I don’t remember a lot about most of those games, other than a few were played here, and you couldn’t get a seat in the balcony by bringing a can of pork and beans.