Excitement, Not Disappointment : Basketball: UNLV, relieved to escape NCAA ban from postseason play, looks forward to season.

What was not among the NCAA’s sanctions of Nevada Las Vegas was perhaps more important to Rollie Massimino than what was.

Missing from the list meted out to the Rebel basketball program Tuesday was one prohibiting participation in the NCAA tournament. Somehow, that made everything else all right.

“No one likes to get penalized, but we certainly accepted it,” said Massimino at the Big West Conference basketball media day Wednesday at a West Los Angeles hotel. “At least the seniors, for the first time, have the opportunity to show that they have the ability to participate in the NCAA tournament. That would have been a major blow, if they weren’t allowed to.”

UNLV did not play in the tournament last season, and this year’s seniors--Ken Gibson, Fred Haygood, Sean Loughran and Dedan Thomas--transferred from junior colleges or other schools and have yet to play in the NCAA event.

“I think every player, to the man, is really, really excited,” Massimino said.

The Rebels weren’t the only ones.

“Thank God it’s over and we get it behind us,” said Jerry Pimm, UC Santa Barbara’s coach. “It seems more of a cosmetic action than a true killer.

“More important, the conference will survive. It will not hurt television. We will still get exposure.”

UNLV is prohibited from appearing in televised nonconference road games during the 1993-94 season. Conference games are not affected.

“Instead of individual sanctions, I look at conference sanctions,” Pimm said. “This is a livable sanction.”

Perhaps more than excited, Massimino is relieved.

“What it really means is that it’s over,” he said. “We close a great page in the book under Jerry (Tarkanian). Now, we can open a new era of UNLV basketball.”

Players were told of the sanctions, invoked because of rules violations, most near the end of Tarkanian’s 18-year tenure as UNLV’s coach, after practice Monday. They did not practice Tuesday because of the expected media blitz, but were back at work Wednesday.

Massimino’s workload is about to increase because of the sanction that allows only one coach to recruit off campus during the school year.

“There are a lot of things that have to be creative for us to succeed,” he said. “Having one person on the road is not going to be easy because going into 20-25 homes, like we normally do every year, now has to be done by me. I was in the hospital last month because I traveled so much recruiting.”

Massimino was hospitalized because of exhaustion.

He will be able to sell fewer players on UNLV because a reduction of two scholarships over two seasons also is among the sanctions, as is one that reduces campus visits by recruits from 15 to 10. But he can sell the NCAA tournament, to which the Rebels seemed to be an annual participant during Tarkanian’s tour.

“It’s all definitely going to have an effect (on recruiting),” Massimino said. “We’re going to have problems, but we’re still going to get players. I think it’s going to work out all right.”