Columnist Ed Graney says the Baltimore Ravens’ Ray Lewis is like cyclist Lance Armstrong in that to appreciate his athletic skills, you first must understand the separation between supreme athlete and questionable character.
In the case of Armstrong, it’s hard to divide humanitarian from cheating superstar. As for Lewis, there is no debating his greatness on a football field, a 17-season career that will end against the 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII on Sunday.
Somewhere, in the bowels of UNLV athletics, where marketing slogans are annually bantered about, I’m certain they are toying with some gems for the 2013-14 basketball season.
Quintrell Thomas accepted long ago that this is the hand college basketball has dealt him, perhaps not the royal flush he imagined coming out of high school as one of the nation’s top 20 players, but one that hasn’t busted him just yet.
Can all the demons be exorcised in three minutes, 43 seconds? Can all the nights when UNLV’s basketball team wasn’t tough or resilient enough disappear in that short amount of time? For now, for today, definitely.
It was two years ago, and San Diego State’s basketball team was in the midst of its best season in school history, a campaign that would end in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament and with a record of 34-3.
Dave Rice wasn’t joking Wednesday night. He stood outside the visitor’s locker room in Albuquerque, dejected about with his basketball team’s five-point loss to New Mexico moments earlier, and looked to the future.
It’s like watching a television rerun, where you know how things will end, but you sit through the entire show anyway. That’s what UNLV basketball has become on the road against quality opponents.
