February 2, 1999
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Things had gotten so bad for UNLV's Bill Bayno early this season that his point guard was being booed at home and another guard couldn't stop complaining every time he was taken out of a game.
Worse yet, the Runnin' Rebels were 4-6 and seemingly headed nowhere, despite having a ton of talent.
A lot can change, though, in just a month in college basketball. And it has in this gambling city where the Rebels are on a roll and Bayno is already making a pitch for them to get a bid to the NCAA postseason tournament.
"There's no doubt in my mind that this team can play with anyone in the country, bar none," Bayno said. "If we can keep playing like this, there's no way the (selection) committee can look at us and say we can't play."
After sputtering through a tough early schedule that included losses to Cincinnati and UCLA, UNLV has won nine of its last 10 games to get to a respectable 13-7.
Point guard Mark Dickel has recovered to lead the team through its winning stretch, even going so far as to take a punch in the face from Texas Christian's Lee Nailon to help UNLV win a crucial road game.
Backup guard Greedy Daniels isn't complaining quite as much about his playing time, and the rest of the Rebels seem to be coming together into a cohesive unit just in time to make a late bid for the NCAA tournament.
"We've improved our defense and our chemistry has continued to get better every game," Bayno said. "We've turned it on and gotten it together."
With seven games left in the regular season, UNLV has an outside chance to hit the magic 20-win mark before going into the postseason Western Athletic Conference tournament.
The Rebels had to win the WAC tournament at home last year, beating No. 3 Utah in the process, to get their first bid to the NCAA tournament since the days when Jerry Tarkanian was the coach. It didn't last long, with UNLV losing to Princeton in the first round.
Things are different this year, Bayno says, even though UNLV has followed the same script of playing erratically early only to gel coming down the stretch when center Keon Clark left the team.
"We struggled a little but not the way we did last year," Bayno said. "We didn't have to deal with suspensions and kids coming back like we did last year."
The Rebels have gotten strong games from sophomore center Kaspars Kambala, averaging 14 points and seven rebounds a game, and touted transfer Shawn Marion has been all he was supposed to be at 18 points and nearly nine rebounds a game.
But it has been the emergence of Dickel, booed at home early in the season for inconsistent play, that has made the difference, at least in the eyes of his coach.
In a recent two-game home stand, Dickel had 19 assists and only one turnover.
"He's always been a guy who takes abuse because he's not flashy and not a good shooter," Bayno said. "He takes the blame when it's not really warranted. But he's been the catalyst of this team."
With no ranked teams among UNLV's final seven regular-season opponents, the Rebels have a chance to win 20 games. That might be enough to get into postseason play, even if UNLV can't repeat what it did last year in winning the WAC tournament.
"I think our strength of schedule will help us," Bayno said. "We could have scheduled a season so we were 17-3 now instead of 13-7. We could have just played two Top-25 teams and then play teams we can beat like a lot of other schools do."
