You can find their names and statistics inside the UNLV basketball media guide, but numbers aren’t what set them apart. An edge did. A rare quality.
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
A close friend of Max Good was surveying the carnage this week, reflecting on the ridiculously huge challenge now facing the veteran college basketball coach, and offered this trace of hope:
Good for Corky Simpson. Not for leaving Rickey Henderson off his baseball Hall of Fame ballot. Not for recanting his stance once bloggers assumed their pious positions and embarrassed the retired sports columnist from Arizona for snubbing the player who on Monday correctly sprinted into Cooperstown with nearly 95 percent of the vote.
There are no easy answers. No uncomplicated solution gift-wrapped with a bow.
Grey Ruegamer knew it was a matter of time, because when you arrive at Super Bowl week and begin talking about how you used to castrate lambs with your teeth and how the worst part was getting blood on your mustache, well, you can bet the questions about handling blitz packages and if Eli Manning will ever emerge from big brother’s shadow are going to disappear for a few minutes.
“We are all in the same boat in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.”
T en years later, the Mountain West Conference welcomed 2009 by having the most significant week in its history, or at least since anybody 10 miles beyond the Wasatch Mountains didn’t need rabbit ears to watch The Mtn.
You place an X on the positive side of the ledger and move on. Watch the tape, break down all the mistakes, try to learn from them, take another deep breath and begin preparing for the next game. There’s not much else to do after such an escape.
They have won and looked disjointed. They have won and looked terrific. They have won on the road. They have won without their leading scorer against a Top 25 team on national television.
Predicting what each month in 2009 will bring our local sports scene: