Six-Week Rest Advised for Exhausted Grgurich

Tim Grgurich treated the basketball season like a drag race instead of a long-distance event and has broken down at Nevada Las Vegas.

Grgurich, hired as coach a week after practice had begun and after UNLV bought out the contract of Rollie Massimino, said he thought he had to go “100 m.p.h.” when he took over the troubled program in November, and it nearly wrecked his health.

“I was at the end of my rope,” he said of his hospitalization earlier this month for symptoms related to exhaustion. “It was time to take a rest.”

Doctors have advised Grgurich to spend six weeks away from the game, but the coach said at a news confernce Wednesday he was unsure when he would return to coaching.

“Right now I’m just trying to get myself healthy,” he said.

Grgurich has been sidelined since Jan. 6, and spent a week undergoing tests at a hospital. He refused to discuss his medical condition, saying, “That’s between me and the doctor.”

An assistant under former Rebel coach Jerry Tarkanian, Grgurich returned with a three-year contract after leaving a job as an assistant with the Seattle SuperSonics.

Grgurich said that doctors want him to “step back and re-evaluate what’s best for me, best for the kids.”

The Rebels are 4-6.