Eric Musselman went to his first football game at UNR a few weeks ago and saw the excitement and emotion and tension that is a rivalry with UNLV. The days and hours and minutes and seconds passed as kickoff grew closer, causing those who love and support the Wolf Pack and all that is blue to become more and more animated. He believes it can happen in basketball, too.
Just over three years ago, Findlay Prep forward Winston Shepard made waves in the college basketball recruiting world by decommitting from the University of Texas to play at San Diego State.
The future is always about three weeks in March, because fair or not, sensible or foolish, right or wrong, college basketball teams and those who coach them are ultimately judged on how they perform once the madness begins.
It may have been hard to determine who was the favorite of the audience Tuesday at Wynn Las Vegas. But a mile or so away at the MGM Grand Garden, there was no debate who the most popular person was. Kobe Bryant was back in town, and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders could only wish they had a scintilla of the adulation that the fans had for Bryant.
Golden State guard Stephen Curry offered a mock apology on Tuesday to the team’s critics for winning the NBA championship in June.
Leave it to Kobe Bryant to put things in their proper perspective when it comes to the Los Angeles Lakers.
Before Thursday, the only time I had spoken with Vlade Divac was years ago. It was Vlade, local radio personality Seat Williams and me sitting in a tiny radio station DJ cubicle.
Dave Rice has been talking about a faster-paced style of play, and in the meantime, the UNLV basketball coach is not slowing down on the recruiting trail.
Atlanta Hawks player Thabo Sefolosha was acquitted by a jury on Friday of all charges related to an April confrontation with New York City police outside a nightclub that left him with a broken leg.
During his high school years, when Jerome Seagears visited Las Vegas for summer basketball tournaments, the thought of staying here for college crossed his mind. He never had that option, however.
Bryant University assistant coach Chris Burns will spend this season as the first openly gay men’s coach in Division I college basketball history.
There is a quote from sportswriter Jonathan Tjarks that goes like this: “Imagine every bad thing you hear about college basketball recruiting. Multiply it by 10. That’s 20 percent of how dirty it is.”
On the first day of practice in his fifth season as UNLV basketball coach, Dave Rice finally was surrounded by what he envisioned all along.
Anthony Bennett has played two years in the NBA, and with the $3.65 million buyout of his contract from Minnesota last week, the former UNLV standout has already pocketed more than $13 million. If that’s the definition of a bust, sign me up.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling in the Ed O’Bannon case that the NCAA violated antitrust laws by limiting student-athlete compensation, but it also nixed a plan to pay student-athletes as much as $5,000 per year more than the cost of attendance for the use of their name, image and likeness.
