Spotlight shines on UNLV again

By The Associated Press     Mar 20, 2007

? There was a time when coach Jerry Tarkanian’s UNLV Runnin’ Rebels were the biggest stars in Sin City.

With Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon and Greg Anthony leading the charge, UNLV won the 1990 national championship and came up a victory short of a second consecutive title a year later.

The Runnin’ Rebels haven’t been a headline act since – until now, that is.

UNLV, which hadn’t won an NCAA game since losing to Duke in the Final Four in 1991, is making another run in the tournament.

The seventh-seeded Runnin’ Rebels knocked off second-seeded Wisconsin and head to the round of 16 to face No. 3 seed Oregon on Friday in the Midwest Regional at St. Louis. UNLV (30-6), with a nine-game winning streak, is the highest-seeded team remaining in the field.

The Rebels ran under the radar most of the season. Picked to finish in the bottom half of the Mountain West Conference, UNLV was not even ranked nationally until a few weeks ago.

The Runnin’ Rebels finished second during the regular season in the conference before sweeping the MWC tournament to lock up an automatic NCAA bid.

“It’s all moving in the right direction,” coach Lon Kruger said Monday. “Even just in the last three weeks, we’ve gotten a lot better.”

The Rebels finally cracked the AP Top 25 on March 5 at the bottom of the list and crept up as high as No. 19 before the tournament began.

A scrappy first-round win over higher-seeded but favored Georgia Tech in the United Center in Chicago led them to Sunday’s matchup with Wisconsin, where Kruger’s son Kevin sank three straight three-pointers late in the game to spark a comeback.

“Nobody can argue any more – we are in the Top 16 in the country, no matter what happens,” the younger Kruger said.

But the team is banged up heading into the next round of the postseason.

Wink Adams landed on his backside with 11 minutes left against the Badgers and badly bruised his tailbone. Adams said he’s still only “60, 65 percent right now” and said he has difficulty squatting, playing defense and jumping.

The team will begin preparing for Oregon (28-7), the Pac-10 tournament champ, today. Expect an up-tempo game.

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