By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Every Las Vegas showroom act needs a straight man and tonight, in the National Invitation Tournament, that role has been assigned to the University of Hawai'i men's basketball team.

NIT officials don't seed teams as much as they just plain set some up to take a fall, and it isn't hard to see what the NIT had in mind when it put the Rainbow Warriors in the Thomas & Mack Center against Nevada-Las Vegas.

By making UH, a team that has already traveled more than 30,000 miles this season, fly some more, the NIT was increasing the chances that UNLV would win and provide a lucrative payday.

Unless the Rainbows can foil the plan with an upset — and they are eight-point underdogs — the combination of a UNLV victory and a Saint Louis win over Minnesota will send Rebels' coach Charlie Spoonhour back to St. Louis, where he coached for seven years before retiring, for a rich, much-anticipated showdown.

Similarly, the NIT is so anxious to get Texas Tech and its coach, Bob Knight, to the NIT semifinals in Madison Square Garden, where his name and reputation will guarantee a box office draw, that the Red Raiders are expected to host throughout the early rounds. Their sacrificial first-round opponent is Nevada of the Western Athletic Conference.

Indeed, the NIT is run as a for-profit — mostly its own — tournament by the Metropolitan (New York) Intercollegiate Basketball Association. And unlike the NCAA, which has a billion dollar TV contract, the NIT depends largely on gate receipts.

So, the NIT largely dispenses with cumbersome details like strength of schedule, Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) numbers and win-loss records to select or seed its teams. It goes straight for the bottom line: Which teams in which combinations will make it the most money?

That's why there are four .500 teams in the tournament while some more accomplished and deserving others, including 19-10 Rice, were left out.

And it is what brings UH to Las Vegas when the NIT had apparently first entertained plans to let the Rainbows go home to host. When the NIT pulled the 11th-hour switch, some people naively wondered if the tournament knew what it was doing. Unless the Rainbows can rewrite the script for this one, the NIT will have shown it knew exactly what it was doing — and why.

And be assured it isn't, as Spoonhour, tongue firmly planted in cheek, suggested, "Because they knew Riley (Wallace) had a lot of friends in St. Louis and is a big Cardinals fan."