Blum’s fundraising gets Lady Rebels back on air

The Lady Rebels were preparing to play UC Santa Barbara at the Thunderdome last weekend when Bob Blum, the team's 91-year-old play-by-play broadcaster, told UNLV coach Kathy Olivier he had raised enough money to get Lady Rebels games back on the air.

Olivier said you could hear the excitement in Blum's voice.

"He said, 'Do you want to make the announcement or should I?' " Olivier said. "It was so ... cute."

Of all the words that have been used to describe Blum since he and Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio business in 1894, "cute" is one I never had before heard. But that's what the Lady Rebels' coach said. I wrote it down and underlined it.

At 5 p.m. today, the Lady Rebels will host Northwestern of the Big Ten in the first round of the BTI Invitational at Cox Pavilion. The Lady Rebels are 8-2, and one of Northwestern's best players is Dannielle Diamant, Jerry Tarkanian's 6-foot-5-inch granddaughter. These are reasons to go, if one is looking for something to do after the Tebow game.

But if one can't make it out to the game, one can listen on the radio, on KSHP-AM 1400.

For the first time this year.

You might have heard that UNLV is strapped for cash. The same apparently is true of IMG College, the company that owns UNLV's media rights. It costs more to get Lady Rebels games on the air than it used to, so a decision was made to make the broadcasts Internet only.

It's cheaper that way, and yes, the games potentially can reach a broader audience. Meaning all of the players' parents, instead of just the ones living in Las Vegas.

But Blum is (real) old school, and when games are available only via the Internet, he can't say the Lady Rebels "are moving left to right on your radio dial."

Blum says this might be his last year calling Lady Rebels games before turning the microphone over to sidekick Adam Candee. So he wanted this year to be special. Or at least the way it used to be. He wanted to say the Lady Rebels were moving left to right on your radio dial. For himself, but more importantly, for the Lady Rebels.

Except at places such as Connecticut and Tennessee and, perhaps now, Baylor, women's basketball players are like the lead singer's girlfriend in that old Supertramp song. They never seem to get a lot.

"For what it takes to produce one men's TV game, we could do a whole season" of radio games, Blum said. "I'm not proposing that; the men are good, they deserve it. With the exception of places like Connecticut and Tennessee, 98 percent of the women have to depend on the major sports for funding.

"We take that into consideration. But traveling with the players, you get attached to them. You think 'What can I do to help?' So I decided to call in a few favors, to see what we could do."

Blum called Cliff Findlay, Rich Abajian and Rick Glenn at Findlay Automotive. He called Marty Linde at Nevada Beverage. He called Steve McKnight at Bank of America, Chuck Johnson of the Las Vegas 51s, Tina Kunzer-Murphy and John Saccenti at MAACO Bowl Las Vegas headquarters, and Brett Grant, the general manager at KSHP. The folks at Custom Hearth & Door in North Las Vegas wrote a check.

They all wrote checks.

And so starting tonight, the Lady Rebels once again will be moving left to right -- or right to left -- across your radio dial.

Olivier thought Blum, who called her games when she played for the Lady Rebels a lot of moons ago, should be the one to tell the players.

A team meeting was called in the lobby of the Pacifica Suites in Santa Barbara. Blum told the players in a week they'd be back on the air. The Lady Rebels cheered. Assorted Lady Rebels hugged Blum.

It was, to use their coach's word, "cute" to see Blum's reaction.

"I don't expect you to win 'em all," he said about what he told the team in the hotel lobby. "I do expect you to play to the best of your ability."

A couple of hours later, the Lady Rebels' Mia Bell sank a buzzer-beating basket to upset UC Santa Barbara, 46-44.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.