Stanback’s DUI forces Rice to act decisively

It's better this way.

It's better that the UNLV basketball player arrested for driving under the influence Friday was Chace Stanback.

The leading scorer and rebounder returning from last season's team. The presumed leader of a roster most expect to contend for a conference championship in 2012. The one a new coaching staff should expect to lean on, count on, bounce ideas off, gauge the team's pulse by.

It's better because now we will know how Dave Rice intends on running his program.

Sorry. It would be different if this were the 12th player on a bench who only gets into exhibition games that those charged with domestic battery are suspended for (more on that later).

Not different in terms of what Stanback is accused of, mind you. Drinking and driving remains the single greatest factor in motor vehicle deaths and injuries. It's beyond serious stuff, no matter who is speeding while struggling to steer straight.

Athletic administrators dread three issues crossing their desks when it comes to potential unlawful actions by student-athletes: Weapons, domestic battery/assault and driving under the influence.

They are not just hot button issues in society. They are Death Valley burning and can all lead to innocent people getting killed.

But the No. 12 player doesn't receive banner headlines. He gets a few paragraphs. Maybe. It's the reality of where one sits on the pecking order of the city's most followed and recognized sports team. Right and wrong doesn't exist when comparing the two. It's just how things work.

Coaching staffs are rightly scrutinized closely in these times and how they are perceived by the outside world is important. When a new coach is faced with disciplining a star player, things need to be handled correctly or the gates of second-guessing and passing judgment swing wide open.

Rice must now balance protecting Stanback's rights against how he wants others to view his team. It's a delicate thing and it's not. Nothing or no one is bigger or more important than the program.

Stanback submitted a blood test of which the results won't be known for a few weeks, so how impaired he was and other details of him getting pulled over at 2:10 a.m. near campus will be sorted out over time. But he gave police enough reason to arrest him and take a booking photo that makes Stanback look as though he hadn't slept in days. It wasn't his finest moment.

At best, Stanback put himself in a terrible position to bring the kind of negative publicity neither he nor the program needs. At worst, he got behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated or otherwise.

Either way, Rice must take action.

He will be fair to Stanback. He will always have a player's back. That's the kind of person Rice is. But he understands such actions must have consequences. He knows something must be done here.

I always will believe Lon Kruger went too soft on Tre'Von Willis when suspending the former guard three games (including two exhibitions) for pleading no contest to domestic battery last season.

I always will believe that, while Jim Livengood has done far more good than otherwise since taking over as athletic director, he should have insisted Kruger come down harder on Willis.

It wasn't a banner day in the perception department for Kruger, Livengood or the men's basketball program.

Disciplinary measures at these times need teeth behind them and exhibitions (translation: glorified scrimmages) where starters play limited minutes don't count. It's laughable when these are included in any suspension and become more pathetic when coaches try to explain why they are with a straight face.

And yet Stanback should be judged for his alleged offense and not by anything Willis did. One case has nothing to do with the other. But any action taken now or over the summer by Rice really won't mean much if regular-season games aren't part of it.

Playing time is and always will be the most significant area where coaches can make the most impact in sending messages to current players and those who will arrive in the coming seasons.

Like football coach Bobby Hauck when an assistant coach was arrested in Colorado after an incident outside a strip club, Rice has been presented a defining moment before coaching a game at UNLV that will show others how the person in charge intends on running the program.

For this, it's best the player involved is one of Stanback's stature.

If it were the No. 12 player, all eyes would be pointed elsewhere.

And that would be a bad thing.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 3 to 5 p.m. Monday and Thursday on "Monsters of the Midday," Fox Sports Radio 920 AM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.