One of the first reports out of Cincinnati said little Sammi, the 9-year-old daughter of Mick Cronin, weighed heavily in his decision to stay at the school. Of course she did, and you would think UNLV would have realized this before putting all eggs in Cronin’s basket.
When I told the UNLV people I wanted to write about the new courtside seating area at Lady Rebels games sometimes referred to as Tiffany Row (there is no official connection with the women’s jewelry and specialty retailer), they pointed to three women’s basketball fans seated in the cushy seats near the baseline.
Whenever UNLV fires a basketball coach or a football coach, two things pop into mind when it comes to speculation about their replacements.
At the same time UNLV called a news conference to announce that Dave Rice had been fired — er, came to a “mutual agreement” with his athletic administration that he would step down as Rebels basketball coach — people were parking their cars and SUVs for “Disney on Ice” at the Thomas & Mack Center.
This is a Christmas story that has nothing to do with the one that will be shown on TBS on a continuous loop Friday. This one is about UNLV coaches with soft spots in their hearts, and a Rebels basketball player who is much better beyond the 3-point stripe than he is with a Mexican yo-yo, and sick kids in the hospital, and the local sports radio host who brings them all together each year.
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.
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.
The UNLV basketball team got a heavy dose of perspective Thursday morning at Sunrise Children’s Hospital. Just 12 hours after holding off stubborn Portland of the West Coast Conference at the Thomas & Mack Center, the Rebels dropped in on pediatric and intensive care wards and put smiles on young faces.
