EDITORIAL: Rice’s firing a result of leadership failure all around

The men's basketball program at UNLV is the linchpin of the entire athletic program. It has to consistently succeed in tangible ways — read: NCAA Tournament appearances — or every other Rebels team will be in peril. When UNLV doesn't have that success, changes must be made. That's why Dave Rice, as good a person as you'll ever meet, rightly finds himself out of a job today.

As the Review-Journal's Matt Youmans reported Sunday, Mr. Rice was fired in the middle of his fifth season as UNLV men's basketball coach. The university generously termed it a resignation, with Athletic Director Tina Kunzer-Murphy stating, "We mutually agreed for him to step aside." But she followed up with a more truthful comment: "I felt we needed to make a change. We expect to win here."

Indeed, and Mr. Rice wasn't doing nearly enough of that, particularly given the highly talented athletes he continually recruited into the program. This season alone, with the Rebels predicted to finish fourth in the Mountain West Conference, the team suffered a stunning nonconference home loss to Arizona State, then opened conference play 0-3. UNLV sits 10th in the 11-team Mountain West heading into tonight's home game against New Mexico.

UNLV reached the NCAA Tournament in Mr. Rice's first two seasons, then failed to reach the tournament the next two seasons. He had an 8-13 conference record over the past season-and-a-half.

The firing was completely justifiable, but it also serves as an indictment of Ms. Kunzer-Murphy. There was already grumbling about Mr. Rice after a 20-13 record and no NCAA bid in 2013-14, with three years still remaining on his contract. Yet the athletic director felt compelled to add two more years to Mr. Rice's deal, putting the school on the hook through the 2018-19 season — which will cost about $1 million.

Yes, in the spring of 2014, the University of South Florida was pursuing Mr. Rice to lead its program; perhaps that played into Ms. Kunzer-Murphy's hasty decision, but it shouldn't have. Coaches in college athletics move on to greener pastures all the time; the athletic director shouldn't have been swayed by the possibility of Mr. Rice leaving, and now the school will have to pay for her short-sighted decision.

All that said, this isn't an indictment of Mr. Rice's conduct, which has been exemplary throughout his coaching stint at UNLV, perhaps no more so than at Sunday evening's news conference announcing his departure. Mr. Rice, a former UNLV player and longtime assistant who left an assistant's post at Brigham Young to become Rebels coach, has also invested in the community through his foundation devoted to autism and other developmental disorders.

Mr. Rice simply couldn't get talent — often superior talent — to translate into results, which is more than enough to get anyone in a leadership position fired. And Ms. Kunzer-Murphy exacerbated the problem with the contract extension. In the new age of college sports, schools in non-Power Five conferences don't have the luxury of having their revenue sports underachieve. If community support for UNLV men's basketball disappears, the whole athletic program is in crisis. As such, UNLV president Len Jessup needs to ask himself if Ms. Kunzer Murphy is the right person to make a hugely important hire for UNLV athletics.