Columnist Ron Kantowski: Strange Moose call helps Rebels slip by Air Force

The call that official Moose Stubing made at the end of Saturday's UNLV-Air Force game at Colorado Springs had to be the worst since ... well, Stubing waved lead-footed Bobby Grich around third base during the 1986 American League Championship Series, when the former was the California Angels' third-base coach.

Grich was out at home by about 20 feet -- roughly the same distance by which Stubing missed the call on Air Force's David Schuck, who was whistled for a foul on Kevin Simmons with 2.1 seconds to play. Simmons made one of the two charity tosses (this time the cliche applies), enabling the Rebels to escape with a 65-64 victory.

Oh sure, there was contact between Schuck and Simmons -- about as much as Larry Johnson has with any of the children he has fathered out of wedlock.

According to the rule book, a foul is a foul, whether it occurs with nine minutes to play or with time running out. Trouble was, what Schuck did to Simmons wouldn't have been a foul with nine minutes to play.

But this is what happens when you're Air Force -- a bad team playing in front of a sparse crowd, which posed absolutely no threat to Stubing or his officiating partners. Ironically, it's also what happened last year with time running out at the Academy, when Schuck was called for a similar ticky-tack foul on Simmons, despite the latter being roughly 75 feet away from the basket.

All I'm saying is that had Saturday's opponent been Rick Majerus and Utah, instead of Reggie Minton and Air Force, and the game had been played in front of 15,000 screaming fans instead of an empty airplane hangar, the Rebels probably lose in overtime.

Not that Stubing didn't try to make it up to the Falcons.

After Air Force rebounded the miss of Simmons' second free throw, the veteran referee put .3 of a second back on the clock, giving Air Force a grand total of 1.1 seconds to travel the length of the court.

Lovely parting gift, eh? To Minton, it had to be like going on the old game show Concentration, and having Hugh Downs hand him the home version of the game on his way out of the studio.

Had I been Minton, I would have forfeit one gift.

* JONNY GONE LATELY: The final words, perhaps, on Jon Denton, the mercurial former UNLV quarterback, who also is a former Eastern Kentucky quarterback, having been booted from the Division I-AA squad.

According to Leon Hart, the EKU quarterbacks coach, "Jon was really a good kid to work with and not a very hard kid to coach. He loves football, works hard at practice and competes in games. He just didn't like going to college.

"His goals were to play in the NFL rather than to graduate from college. And in my opinion, he has the athletic tools to reach his goals."

Denton, a Green Valley native, has declared himself eligible for the upcoming NFL draft.

* AROUND THE HORN: A feature in the Sunday morning newspaper talked about how fortunate Oscar De La Hoya was, when he walked away unscathed from his stalled car on the Interstate in 1997. We wonder if any of the eight drivers who plowed into the champ's abandoned Mercedes felt the same way. ... Southern Utah University, situated up I-15 in Cedar City, doesn't have much of a basketball tradition yet, unless you count its frequent flyer miles. Hard to believe, but SUU and Youngstown State (in Ohio) are in the same conference (Mid-Continent). ... A guy named Anil Kumble from India took all 10 wickets in a cricket match Monday, which is more rare than a perfect game in baseball. It only has happened once before. A news account said that a single inning in cricket can last for more than 10 hours, which must be like watching last year's Stars bullpen trying to r etire the side. ...

"Original Six" fans will be chagrined to learn that as of Feb. 20, three of the most venerable arenas in hockey -- the Chicago Stadium, Montreal Forum and Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto -- will be silent. That's the day the Leafs will move into the new Air Canada Centre. ... Las Vegas Thunder fans aren't the only ones who can't see the entire four corners of the hockey rink, due to nasty sight lines within their home building. Surprisingly, only three-fourths of the crowd at a Phoenix Coyotes game can see both ends of the ice, due to the faulty design of the relatively new America West Arena. ... Las Vegas has been identified as one of 10 franchises that will begin play in a restructured Roller Hockey International league this summer, but it's anybody's guess where the team will play. Thomas & Mack director Pat Christenson said RHI officials have contacted him about playing in the university's under-construction basketball pavilion next season, but that the Mack is out of the question this year. ...

Sun reader Walt Wilkes asks "What's a long snapper?" Well, Walt, it's not a turtle with a protruding neck. In football vernacular, it's the center who snaps the ball back to the punter, the position that UNLV quarterback prospect Ryan Hanson hopes to hold down next year while he's learning John Robinson's offense. ... VilCom, the Chapel Hill, N.C.-based network that owns the University of North Carolina broadcast rights, has admitted that it enhances Tar Heel broadcasts with prerecorded crowd noise. You know the Crazies at Cameron Indoor Stadium in neighboring Durham are gonna have some fun with that one. The Duke fans are like a Spinal Tap amplifier -- whereas most crowds top out at "10" on the decibel meter, the Cameron Crazies hit "11" every time the Heels come to town.

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