Through many years and many UNLV athletic directors, the athletic department had the luxury of knowing it could be bailed out by the university at the end of the fiscal year. Soon, that no longer will be the case.
Basketball
Asking “what if” can be tantalizing and maddening. Las Vegas sports fans know the impact of that question.
Baseball’s winter meetings will return to Las Vegas in 2018 at Mandalay Bay. The resort also will host the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics annual convention in 2020 and 2022.
UNLV’s athletic department is running about a $4.9 million deficit because of shortfalls in the school’s top two revenue-producing sports — men’s basketball and football.
UNLV hired Collegiate Sports Associates to conduct its search for an athletic director. Also, Nancy Rapoport, special counsel to UNLV president Len Jessup, will serve as chairwoman of the search committee.
Brooke Johnson scored 20 points to help UNLV hold off Boise State 58-55 in a Mountain West women’s basketball game Wednesday in Boise, Idaho.
With no guaranteed money game on UNLV’s 2016 football schedule and men’s basketball ticket sales down 5 percent from last year at this time, the school is projected to have a budget deficit of $1.5 million to $3 million in 2016-17.
Last summer, UNLV senior basketball players Aley Rohde and Amie Callaway — the only two upperclassmen on the Lady Rebels — went to a bunch of sentimental movies together.
You can never underestimate the spirit of sports, those intangibles that make certain athletes rise to the occasion when all seems lost in a season, when your bench has been reduced to the point your basketball coach spent part of his day before a conference game against your biggest rival glancing at the school’s football roster.
The Review-Journal Sports will unveil some new features beginning this week. Those changes began in Sunday’s print edition with columnist Ron Kantowski debuting his Las Vegas Insider. He will report on the sports people that make up the city.
UNLV now apparently has an important ally in its efforts to bring NCAA-sanctioned events back to Las Vegas.
The UNLV women’s basketball team was picked to finish fifth in the 2015-16 Mountain West preseason poll, which was released Wednesday by the league office.
UNLV and Florida Gulf Coast headline the eight-team field for the Las Vegas Classic on Dec. 22 and 23 at Orleans Arena, it was announced Wednesday. Both teams were in last season’s NCAA Tournament, and the Eagles became the first No. 15 seed to advance to the Sweet 16.
UNLV forward Carlos Lopez-Sosa confirmed he will return for his senior season. A fourth-year junior from Findlay Prep, he is on schedule to graduate this summer and had options of transferring or turning professional.
