Rebels have to wait till next year

By Brian Hilderbrand

Saturday, May 31, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Dwaine Knight spent five years on the PGA Tour in the 1970s as a player and just concluded his 31st season as a head collegiate golf coach.

Knight probably thought he had seen it all when it came to the fickle nature of golf, but nothing prepared him for the Jekyll-and-Hyde performance of the Rebels in the past eight months.

After a slow start to the season, the Rebels put together a remarkable run beginning in late September in which they were in contention to win every tournament they entered — nine in all — going into the NCAA West Regional this month.

“I can never remember playing in the final group every time since September — that’s a long stretch,” Knight said. “This group really had a chance for five or six wins very easily.”

Just as suddenly as the streak began, with a victory in the Angel Park Shoot-Out at the end of September, it came crashing to a halt when UNLV seemingly couldn’t buy a birdie — or very many pars — at the West Regional in Bremerton, Wash.

UNLV, which had played with and beaten the top-ranked teams in the nation for seven months, turned in the team’s worst performance of the season, shooting 56 over par and finishing 24th out of 27 teams. As a result, the Rebels failed to qualify for the NCAA Men’s Golf Championships for the second year in a row and the third time since 2004 — a major disappointment for a coach whose primary goal is to have his team compete for the national championship on an annual basis.

UNLV was in contention going into the last four holes in the opening round of the West Regional when the Rebels fell apart down the stretch and were unable to recover during the final two rounds.

Knight never saw it coming and, two weeks later, still is at a loss to explain the collapse.

“We had some good moments and played really well in a lot of tournaments all over the country,” Knight said. “When I really thought we would probably peak would have been at Washington. We were kind of headed in that direction, (but) nobody played well.”

Looking back on the season, Knight said the Rebels might have benefited from winning more than twice during that nine-tournament stretch.

“I think that would have allowed us to develop a little bit more confidence to have handled a bad start like we had at the regional,” he said. “Still, that’s a lot of competitive golf for a long period of time to not have it the week that meant the most.”

Many Division I golf programs never have won a national championship, and it has been 10 years since Knight and UNLV captured their lone team title. (UNLV’s Ryan Moore won the individual title in 2004, a year the Rebels did not qualify as a team for the finals.)

That doesn’t come as a complete surprise to Knight, who has built UNLV into one of the premier collegiate golf programs in the country.

“Now I realize how difficult they are to win,” he said of championships. “We really had some good shots and any of those teams could have won, they were good enough. You just have to have a lot of things go your way. The one thing I really thought we would do was consistently be able to be there to compete.”

Knight said he believes the days of a few teams dominating college golf went the way of unlimited scholarships. The University of Houston won 12 NCAA team championships from 1956 to 1970, when the NCAA didn’t restrict the number of scholarships a school could offer. The NCAA now mandates that a Division I men’s program can offer only 4.5 scholarships annually, which Knight said has brought more parity to the sport.

Since 2001, seven schools have won the NCAA Division I men’s golf championship. Only Oklahoma State and Georgia have won it twice since 1999.

“When I first got into college golf there were no limits on scholarships, so the teams that had the most money could go out and get as many players as they wanted,” Knight said.

“Now, if you get a really good player and a little depth to go with him, you can really compete. There are a lot of golf programs now that get a (full) scholarship player and you can build a pretty good team if you have a really outstanding player and some depth.”

UNLV had an outstanding player in junior Seung-Su Han and a strong cast of supporting players but still couldn’t get it done this year.

Such is the fickle nature of the game.