Banana Slugs slither into South Point

Every year between Christmas and New Year’s, the South Point hosts an NCAA Division III tournament. It’s a basketball box of chocolates: You never know what you’ll find. Except scholarships. They aren’t allowed per D-III rules.

This past week I found the usual charm, the usual innocence, the usual plethora of 6-foot-3-inch guys playing below the rim but running the plays as they were designed in the huddle.

I also found the Banana Slugs of UC-Santa Cruz, who were bestowed with the accolade of Best Nickname in College Sports by ESPN.

The banana slug is a slimy little creature indigenous to the redwoods around the UCSC campus. It was the school’s unofficial mascot before being changed to Sea Lions by the higher-ups when UC Santa Cruz joined D-III in 1980. The lower-ups (UCSC students) voted quickly to change it back.

Sammy the Slug has roamed the sidelines ever since.

“People outside of California think it’s so funny and peculiar,” said affable Slugs coach Ron DuBois, who was a walk-on at Arizona State before earning a scholarship — a foreign concept to his players. “But we wouldn’t want to be anything else. It’s unique and makes us stand out. We have a lot of pride in the Slugs.”

UC Santa Cruz, which has a modest $1 million athletic budget and has never won more than 13 games in a season, was in jeopardy of abandoning its sports program until students agreed to a fee hike in May.

On Wednesday, the Banana Slugs defeated Wheaton College (nickname: Thunder) of Illinois 80-70. It was a good win, said Ron DuBois, whose wife, Rebecca, is a professor in UCSC’s Biomolecular Engineering Department.

DICKEL RETURNS

The last time many of us saw Mark Dickel, the former Rebels point guard was standing atop the scorer’s table at the Thomas & Mack Center, exhorting a raucous crowd after UNLV won the 2000 Western Athletic Conference championship.

It had been awhile.

Dickel was spotted in the seats under the basket at one of the myriad holiday college tournaments at South Point. He was with high school-aged players from his native New Zealand whom he was coaching at another hoopfest in town.

“I stopped playing two or three years ago,” said Dickel, 39. “I coach a pro team, and I’ve got like an AAU program.

“Time goes fast, mate.”

Dickel said he remembers jumping onto the scorer’s table more than he remembers the Rebels losing to Tulsa in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

“I miss it, man,” he said of playing basketball in general, and of playing college ball in Las Vegas in specific. “You’re so young when you get done playing, and it’s like the best part is already over when you’re 21 or 22. It’s not yesterday anymore.”

REMEMBERING LAVELL

The last time I saw LaVell Edwards, the Brigham Young coaching icon who died Thursday at age 86, was on the Sam Boyd Stadium concourse during the Las Vegas Bowl. It must have been Cal vs. BYU, because I remember it was at night, and I remember it was cold.

We were standing in the hot chocolate line on the BYU side.

Avuncular LaVell Edwards was wearing a Gore-Tex coat, like George Costanza in “Seinfeld.”

Instead of taking bows in a heated luxury box, he was sitting in the stands with Cougars fans who had supported him through the years.

Well played, sir.

When BYU arrived in town for the WAC championship game in 1996, the great offensive mastermind famously said: “I don’t think they’re very happy about us being in Las Vegas. We’ve come with a $20 bill and the Ten Commandments and won’t break either one.”

That was pretty awesome, too.

BOWL GAME REDEMPTION

When he was a sophomore, Kai Nacua of Liberty High School was suspended for his part during an ugly brawl with Memphis players at the end of the Miami Beach Bowl while playing for Brigham Young. You may have seen the lowlights, which for a time were shown on a continuous loop on ESPN.

He closed out his career by intercepting a pass preserving the Cougars’ 24-21 victory over Wyoming in the Poinsettia Bowl.

What a nice turnaround for the local kid.

“I almost overran the ball because I was so excited,” Nacua said.

Added BYU coach Kalani Sitake: “I was thankful he was able to do that on his last play as a Cougar. He made plays all night.”

TAKING A KNEE

• Three years after being drafted, former Desert Pines High and Baylor star Pierre Jackson made his NBA debut for the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday, scoring seven points against Houston. (He had five assists in 12 minutes against Golden State on Friday.) This is a nice story about perseverance, and about paying it forward: When the diminutive Jackson was in college and overheard a mother telling her 12-year-old son the basketball shoes he wanted were too expensive, Jackson gave the young man (who wore the same size) two pairs of his.

• During Christmas week, the Wyoming basketball team was in town to play in a tournament at Orleans Arena; on Saturday, it was back to play a conference game against UNLV. Who made this schedule, Continental Trailways?

• Speaking of itineraries, here’s the one South Point Arena director and former UNLV quarterback Steve Stallworth shared in regard to the Family Stallworth’s traditional bowl game vacation: Belk Bowl (Virginia Tech vs. Arkansas); Peach Bowl (Alabama vs. Washington); Falcons vs. Saints; Hawks vs. Spurs; College Football Hall of Fame. Clark Griswold would have been impressed.

• The most amazing thing about Colorado State losing 61-50 to Idaho in the Potato Bowl was that the game was scoreless after the first quarter. The 84 points scored in the second half were a bowl game record. So in retrospect, the 33 points UNLV yielded in a loss to the Vandals here Sept. 24 doesn’t look so bad.

• Philadelphia 76ers sideline reporter Molly Sullivan, who was based in Las Vegas during her days with the MountainWest Sports Network (The Mtn.) and spent Christmas here with her father, who lives here, was among the NBA sideline reporters who dressed as Craig Sager to honor their colleague who succumbed to cancer Dec. 15.

“Proud & humbled to wear the #SagerStrong shirt as NBA sideline reporters honored the man who showed us all how it’s done,” she posted on her Twitter account.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.