Rebels not only ones with issues on road

I must have been 5 or 6 years old when I first became aware of the home-court advantage. It was Easter, and I was huddled around our new color Sylvania TV set with siblings, and Dorothy was clicking the heels of her ruby red slippers together and droning on about there being no place like home.

When she woke up, there were these farmhands at Dorothy's bedside. Toto, too. And though these tractor jockeys didn't appear to be the sharpest tacks in the box, at least they weren't creepy looking, apple-hurling trees.

A hallucinatory trip to Oz is a lot like a road game at Laramie, Wyo., except it doesn't often snow in Oz, and, as far as I know, there's not a half-naked guy walking around Munchkinland dressed in a gold beer barrel and white cowboy boots.

I should also point out that Dorothy Gale hailed from Kansas, where there really is no place like home, where the Jayhawks are 13-0 this season. Away from Allen Fieldhouse, Kansas is just 8-5, so even the traditional powers get clunked in the head with a yellow brick from time to time.

UNLV, which is kinda, sorta a traditional power if one takes into account the entire body of work, is 13-0 at home and 3-0 at neutral sites this season, with wins over North Carolina (at Orleans Arena) and Illinois (at Chicago). This would seem to bode well for the Rebels' chances in the NCAA Tournament, though one never knows when a kid named Farokhmanesh from one of those directional schools is going to start draining 27-foot jump shots.

That's on one hand. On the other hand, the Rebels are 6-5 on the road, where they suddenly can't beat anybody, not even the minnows in the Mountain West pond.

Before Tuesday's 102-97 overtime loss at Texas Christian, UNLV was -- as the headline in Tuesday's newspaper proclaimed -- leaking oil. But after building an 18-point second-half lead in the less-than-hostile environment of Daniel-Meyer Coliseum, the whole damn transmission fell out.

And now the Rebels must play their next game at New Mexico, where the arena known as the Pit is surrounded by a moat filled with alligators.

Perhaps Kendall Wallace can come off the bench to make 38 3-point shots, as he seemingly did two years ago, when the Rebels somehow won there.

You can analyze these road woes to death, and UNLV fans have, and it's not going to change anything. Not if you believe the story in Sports Illustrated last year that concluded the boost home teams supposedly receive from their crowds, and the negative pull that away teams supposedly receive by traveling to hostile environments -- or even TCU -- are old wives' tales, or old coaches' tales, or old coaches' wives' tales.

"What's Really Behind Home Field Advantage" was taken from a book called "Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won" by Tobias Moskowitz and Jon L. Wertheim, whose names conjure images of ink blots, tweed jackets with patches on the elbows and pipe tobacco. Especially Moskowitz's.

The basis of the article and the book is that the only inherent advantage to playing at home, or the only inherent disadvantage to playing away from it, is that home teams get most of the 50-50 calls -- not because officials are bad guys, but because officials are human, governed by the laws of human nature.

Think about it. When the home team is on a 9-0 run, and the crowd and Dick Vitale are going nuts, and the home team has a 3-on-1 fast break and there's contact and the whistle blows, well, 99 percent of the time the call is going to be block, not charge. And count the basket.

Especially at Duke.

A lot of these officials will even make an elaborate count-the-basket sign with arm flourishes and whatnot, because arm flourishes during an 11-0 run make the home crowd go even more nuts. Human nature.

So if this is true -- and these guys Moskowitz and Wertheim have done the research to indicate it is -- Rebels fans should put away the garlic cloves and rosary beads. It's beyond their control.

They should take solace in knowing that it is possible to outrebound smaller teams on the road, that it is possible to develop a killer instinct or play like Wisconsin upon taking an 18-point second-half lead, that it is possible to hit a crucial one-and-one and win a game away from home, even if the plane is late and the chambermaid doesn't leave a chocolate on the pillow. Indiana did all of these things in '76.

Rebels fans should also take solace in the fact New Mexico doesn't have any former Valley High standouts who play with a serious chip on their shoulder.

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