UNLV hoops notebook: A slimmer, stronger Wink

By Ryan Greene

Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008 | 2 a.m.

You wake up to, say, a bowl of cheerios.

Lunch or dinner at McDonald's? Forget about it. How about some salad and baked chicken instead?

And some fresh fruit to top it all off?

For a college kid, that's about as far as you can get from the daily diet. But Wink Adams has had no choice but to accept it.

It's hard not to notice the appearance here early into the 2008-09 practice season of the UNLV senior guard. As the Rebels prepare for their most highly anticipated season since the glory days of the early 1990s, a lot is being placed on the shoulders of the 6-foot dynamo.

Now, he's just more fit to handle it all.

"It started this summer, and that's why it's kind of hard," Adams said of going on a diet for the first time in his life. "When I first got here I tried to put on weight. Now I've put on too much weight, so now I've got to drop some. This is my first time I've ever been on a diet, so if (Jason) Kabo and my coaches want me to, I'll get down."

Kabo, the team's strength and conditioning guru, put Adams and teammate Brice Massamba on diets over the summer in an effort to drop some unwanted pounds. But it's the senior's productivity in the weight room that has done just as much to give him his more defined appearance here early in the season.

"Since he's been here, he's gotten stronger each year," Kabo said. "When he came out of high school, he was good physically, he just had never lifted weights before.

"He's what we call a physical specimen. He has no fear of lifting weights."

In fact, he's taken so well to extended weight regimen that now, while teammates are doing their thing in the weight room, at times Kabo will send Adams off to do extra cardio workouts. In a sense, he's reached a ceiling of sorts on the weights.

This summer, his max squat was 500 pounds, besting a previous personal record of 430.

The cardio goes hand-in-hand with the Wink Adams Diet.

"They've been killing me," he joked. "We've been having team meals, and they'll be having chicken tenders and all that other good stuff, but me and Brice are the only ones eating salad and baked chicken, so everyone's teasing us about what we eat."

It doesn't stop there, though. Adams said when he goes home after the day's work, he drives through a neighborhood littered with bright signs trying to draw him into nearly every fast food chain known to man.

"McDonald's, that's kind of my main place," he said with a grin. "I like to go get some spicy chickens, a little drink and some fries. Everything I get now has to be grilled, I can't eat fried. It's got to be salad, fruit, vegetables. That's all I can eat right now."

He's also had to ditch the boxes of Apple Jacks and Golden Grahams from home. In practice, he's even going a step further this season by running drills and scrimmages while wearing long sleeves under his uniform top in an effort to burn every calorie possible.

Adams is at 210 pounds after finishing last season at around 218. He said the goal Kabo helped him set when he started the diet was to try and drop two pounds a week so by the time the season tips off, he could be at a playing weight of between 195 and 200 pounds.

The results are showing in practice so far, too. During five-on-five drills Wednesday, Adams executed drive after drive to the bucket. Some were finished, some weren't. It's essentially a continuation on what Adams did a year ago in using his bowling ball style to get to the free throw line 178 times.

Now he feels that style can be even more effective.

"I can really take the ball up now and control myself in the air," he said.

Rougeau on the rise

Midway through Wednesday's practice, after Adams swiped a pass near midcourt, he led a two-on-one break with fellow senior René Rougeau to his right. He flipped the ball over to Rougeau, who skied for a two-handed flush and pulled at the rim a bit in doing so.

Expect to see more of that this season from the 6-foot-6 wing, who's also been mixing it up with the Rebels' new trio of big men and scrapping for boards with intensity on the practice floor.

"Me being a senior, I've got to lead," he said. "I can't just lead by telling people, but I've got to lead by action as well. Getting in there, I've got to take some contact, hit the weights some more and just try to pack on a little more weight to help me finish even harder."

Rougeau said he's also trying to fill the shoes of departed senior Corey Bailey, who averaged 6.4 points and 3.9 rebounds per game for the Rebels a year ago in his own style.

"He went to the boards, got a few tip jams, and I kind of look up to (BYU's) Lee Cummard, too," Rougeau said. "He's a wing guy, he goes hard to the boards and he definitely is a deadly guard. He can shoot, he can drive, and more important than anything else, he can go to the boards. Coach is always saying you've got to make sure to put a body on him, so I want to be that kind of guy.

"Just being someone the team can go to, getting a rebound, I learned that at the end of the year going to the boards helped our team make the tournament."

Rougeau said he's focused on improving his squat weight over the summer to be more explosive in his final season. He also said he's been spending extra time in the gym with sophomore Tre'von Willis, who figures to be UNLV's starting point guard come opening night. They've been making sure to get the alley-oop timing down pat before it's actually showtime.

"Seeing as we'll be playing a lot together, we had to work on that," he said.

Mixing and matching

The coaching staff mixed players throughout the first, second and scout teams in practice Wednesday. Lon Kruger said it helps get everyone used to playing with everyone, since you never know how a game will play out in terms of foul trouble and whatnot.

In other words, an official starting lineup for the Nov. 11 exhibition might not be set yet.

Most of the rotation attention is being paid to the three big men: Darris Santee, Beas Hamga and Brice Massamba.

"I think Darris with his age difference, maturity experience-wise, he seems more comfortable in some things," Kruger said. "But of course Beas and Brice are making strides, so I like that."

Massamba and Hamga went head-to-head plenty on Wednesday, as the two appear to be battling for the No. 2 spot behind Santee. Massamba at times used his thicker frame to out-muscle Hamga down low. But at the same time, Hamga looked great in stretches on the defensive end and was a stronger rebounder as the day wore on.

Free throws ...

Former UNLV coach Charlie Spoonhour went to Wednesday afternoon’s practice, sitting about eight feet off the Thomas & Mack Center court. He liked his red-cushioned seat. “I’m as close to the court as I want to get,” said the man who guided UNLV to a 54-31 record. He quit, for health reasons, a day after a 94-60 thumping at Missouri on Feb. 15, 2004. His son, Jay, took over, going 6-4 the rest of the way. Then UNLV hired Kruger ... Dr. Edward Klein, a noted sports psychologist and motivational speaker who occasionally works with UNLV players, watched Wednesday’s practice at the scorer’s table. He has worked with several pro teams, including the Lightning of the NHL when it won the Stanley Cup trophy in 2004. He beamed about the ring that team gave him and about the Rays, who played in Game 1 of the World Series on Wednesday night.

Sun sports reporter Rob Miech contributed to this report.