Three Up, Three Down: Hauck, Rice bring humor, harmony to tennis fling

With the score of an exhibition match at the Fertitta Tennis Complex surprisingly tied Saturday, UNLV football coach Bobby Hauck wound up hard on his first service. There was a grunt, a sign that Hauck had struck the ball with fury -- or pulled a hamstring.

Hauck's partner, Dave Rice, the new Rebels basketball coach, flinched and craned his neck like the crowd at Cape Canaveral. The ball had whistled past his ear and rapidly gained altitude before re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and landing in the Whiskey Pete's parking lot in Primm, minus its heat shield.

"Was that out?" Hauck asked chair umpire Dick Calvert, recalling the scene in "Bachelor Party" in which Tom Hanks blasts about six dozen tennis balls into the next-door neighbor's yard, baseball-style, while proclaiming, "Cleveland Wins the Pennant!"

Actually, Hauck wasn't all that bad. Rice sort of was.

They were both good sports to come out in support of the UNLV men's tennis team, making Senior Day against San Diego State a little more special for Mehdi Bouras, the Rebels' only four-year man.

At some schools, the football coach and the basketball coach don't like each other. At some schools, the football coach and the basketball coach don't know where the tennis courts are.

"The highlight of my day was hitting an ace against an 8-year-old," Rice said, shortchanging Tim Blenkiron's diminutive partner, Jack Hambrook, by two years.

Blenkiron, who won the 1997 NCAA doubles championship at UNLV while partnering with fellow Australian Luke Smith, and the pint-sized Hambrook, one of Blenkiron's pupils in the No Quit Tennis Academy and son of UNLV tennis coach Owen Hambrook, won the tiebreaker-style exhibition, 7-4.

Blenkiron brought two rackets where none was probably needed. I thought he might offer them to Hauck to use as snowshoes, considering the football coach grew up in Montana.

But it was Hauck who produced the match highlight, whacking a wicked backhand past an unsuspecting/dozing Blenkiron to tie the score 2-2.

"When I saw the big guy going the other way, I put a drop shot inside the line there," Hauck said, effecting a Mary Carillo impression. "Hey, I watch Wimbledon. I know what I'm talking about."

When it was Blenkiron's turn to serve, he put a little mustard on one, a la Roscoe Tanner. Some of it got on Hauck's T-shirt.

The match sort of reminded one of the Bobby Riggs vs. Billie Jean King "Battle of the Sexes" match in 1973, if, say, Riggs' specialty was bowling or overhauling transmissions.

Hauck said his next-best sport, besides football, is snow and water skiing. He's good in fishing, too, though fishing wasn't a sport when Kyle Rote Jr. won "The Superstars" on ABC.

Rice plays golf to a 6-handicap. He said he used to hit tennis balls with Jay Spoonhour during lunch hour when they were assistant coaches under Jay's dad, Charlie. That was eight years ago, the last time Rice picked up a racket.

But I still bet he could beat Rick Majerus.

THREE UP

■ Former UNLV women's basketball coach Regina Miller was named coach at University of Illinois-Chicago on Thursday. The Flames play in Butler's Conference, aka the Horizon League. Miller, 175-125 in 10 seasons as Lady Rebels coach, will bring 23 years of Division I coaching experience -- and a parka -- to UIC.

■ After guiding the Texas Stars to the American Hockey League's Calder Cup finals in his and their rookie season, former Wranglers coach and general manager Glen Gulutzan has the Stars back in the playoffs after finishing second in the Western Conference regular-season standings. Texas trails the Milwaukee Admirals 3-2 in the first-round series, but not to fret: Word is Gulutzan will invoke the names of Eddie Shore and Toe Blake and resort to "old-time hockey" when the series resumes Monday in Milwaukee.

■ NASCAR planted 110 trees -- one for each green flag during the race -- at Daytona Beach International Airport in an effort to offset the carbon burned during the Daytona 500.

Although there are a lot of trees at the Daytona airport, these new ones shouldn't be hard to spot. By now, they've probably had a big number "88" carved into their bark.

THREE DOWN

■ Bryce Harper hit the right-field wall with his face Thursday night and was down for three minutes. The wall -- Harper played the next day with a stiff neck -- is giving him more difficulty than Class-A pitching. The Las Vegas wunderkind, now wearing contact lenses, is hitting .306 for the Hagerstown (Md.) Suns of the South Atlantic League and has homered in two straight games. He was 3-for-3 Friday with a homer, double and six RBIs.

■ Fact you may find interesting if you grew up in some place such as Milwaukee or Akron or if your surname is Lebowski: For the first time since its inception in 1959, the Pro Bowlers Association Tour did not have a multiple winner in 2010-11.

■ Is it just me, or does the infield grass at Cashman Field look like a Chia Pet with alopecia?

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