Sports Columns
The big picture has been dwarfed to a few weeks and is much clearer today.
Oscar Bellfield is a college sophomore who when asked if he could invite anyone to dinner, included the following:
Stones haven’t been cast. It has been more like boulders flung ashore by tsunami waves, the ones standing nearly 30 feet high and weighing 1,600 tons.
Every game and opponent is different. Lon Kruger is correct on that part. He was also accurate in saying a major reason his UNLV basketball team dropped games at home against New Mexico and at San Diego State last week had as much to do with opposing talent as anything else.
I always had this Olympics wish when it came to professionals being part of the competition: When the Dream Team rolled into and through Barcelona in 1992, when it won eight basketball games by an average score of 117-74, when those poor saps from Angola were through posing for pictures and asking for autographs from the players who had just pasted them 116-48, it would have been the opportune time for America to expand its chest and return the moment to its amateurs.
I am not certain where most of the defensive coaches for UNLV football the past few years landed, but here’s a guess: On staff with the Guyana rugby team.
He doesn’t move all that fast. His wheelchair is positioned as a defensive protector of the goal line. Most times, others push beyond him through the orange cones and score with ease.
The boss has a twisted sense of humor, which is why I wasn’t surprised when he told me the first thing I should do when meeting a group of youth soccer players from Transylvania would be to slice open a wrist and see if they came running at the sight of blood. What a kidder, that Joe Hawk.
F or those who missed the entire first half of UNLV-New Mexico basketball on television Wednesday evening, those who sat clutching their remotes tighter and tighter as two Top 25 teams went at it but were nowhere to be found on the ol’ tube, you can be certain one theme defined the matchup from its outset.
Matt Shaw says it wasn’t about making a statement, because he has been part of a college basketball program for years now and understands the roller-coaster ride that is a 30-game regular season. He has seen how rhythm shooting can propel teams to unbelievable stretches of play, how it can demoralize even a ranked opponent.
UNLV needs to play basketball today as if it’s the one opening a jaw and showing teeth. It needs to clamp down and not let go.
At an NCAA Tournament party inside a South Point ballroom in March, hundreds of college basketball fans gathered for the opening day of games.
They ate (some), drank (a lot) and wagered (even more). They cheered and booed. They shot baskets for prizes. They laughed when Brigham Young lost another first-round game.
The telephone in the high school football coach’s office rang a few days after the announcement of a hiring at UNLV. The visit came shortly thereafter.
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