When I was a senior in high school, the Golden State Warriors were NBA champs. They had Rick Barry and Jamaal Wilkes, with the funky shooting stroke, and Clifford Ray. They also had Al Attles’ leisure suits, and his pointed collars and pants, which often were loud or plaid.
These college basketball lid-lifters and early-season games against teams supposedly easily vanquished have not always gone well for Dave Rice’s UNLV teams. The words “gasoline” and “fire” immediately come to mind.
The elbow caught Diamond Major square. It was as if someone had painted a target on the middle of her forehead and fired a bazooka. It was friendly fire — it was at a Lady Rebels practice a couple of weeks ago.
There’s something in the sports writer’s code, an unwritten rule, about not asking for autographs. When I heard that Jerry Tarkanian had died Wednesday morning, asking him for his autograph when I was a young sports writer was one of the first things that popped into my mind.
The Rebels, a talented if rudderless bunch, had somehow slipped to 1-5 coming into Saturday.
UNLV lost to UNR in basketball again on Wednesday night, and that was a bad thing if you were Rebels coach Dave Rice, who takes a ration of grief — or something like it — whenever the Rebels stub a toe against the lesser squads of the Mountain West Conference.
