Memo to the person who keeps official stats for UNLV basketball games: Tre’Von Willis wants to have a little chat.
Ed Graney
Ed Graney is a sports columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, covering a variety of topics and the Las Vegas sports scene.
egraney@reviewjournal.com … @edgraney on Twitter. 702-383-4618
It will come Saturday evening at San Diego State, the most significant football game UNLV will have played in eight years. But regardless if the Rebels win or lose against the lowly Aztecs, whether they become bowl eligible or finish two games under .500, Mike Sanford’s future as head coach should be even more solidified come Sunday morning.
It’s not often the better coaching job in a UNLV basketball game takes place opposite the Rebels bench.
Randy Couture over the last 15 months learned one or two or 10 valuable lessons but none more important than a simple truism often echoed throughout sports: Play to your strength.
It is in their hands now for the first time in what seems an eternity. Eight years, really. But what a long, painful, frustrating eight it must have been for those who follow UNLV football. Think of the world’s incessant wait for Tom Cruise to take up scientology full time and try ruling the universe in anonymity. That long.
He has made this walk before while thinking of her and will do so again.
The fifth season that could decide Mike Sanford’s future as head football coach at UNLV will arrive with this certainty: The Rebels are solid at a most significant position.
Face it. Watching poker live or on television is hardly like watching Ellen Burstyn in “Requiem for a Dream.” There is the drama of winning millions of dollars and a shiny bracelet, and then there is an electroshock therapy scene that leaves you immobile.
This is how the game is played: A college basketball program signs a highly rated recruit who also considered a program of superior stature and tradition. In this case, Kentucky.
They begin to occur in a college football coaching’s staff third season and increase in the fourth. Measuring games. Those weeks when it is determined where your program stands in relation to the best in its conference. Those weeks when you discover how far you have come and how far you must travel to be considered valid.
Did you hear the one about the guy who makes snow for a living and who woke up one day to find himself a crew member for an NHRA team, handling everything from tires to rear suspension to repacking parachutes?
There was a moment at a Texas football practice last week when the winningest coach in program history approached the man who has been in charge of the Longhorns since 1998.
Kathy Olivier just keeps talking — she’s a college basketball coach, which means she owns the intrinsic capacity to yap like Churchill — until the recruit’s eyes flicker. That’s when she knows the proper button has been pushed.
