Rice needs to run tighter UNLV ship, not lose grip

It ends so quickly. For all but one team, the NCAA Tournament each March is a cruel mixture of unrestrained joy and overwhelming sadness.

In the case of UNLV basketball, the latter has come far too early given its seeding in the field the past few years.

Expectations can be the damnedest thing, and those placed on Dave Rice as head coach have been both fair and excessive, a passion that is acceptable on some levels and yet also has crossed major lines of decency.

If you want to go after the man, well, this is the path he chose, the job he accepted, the reality he understood existed when coaching the Rebels. He played it, lived it, knows it better than anyone else. His is a position wide open for critique. You accept it or you go coach UC Irvine, where 25 wins and an NCAA berth will get you a key to the city and elected mayor all in a day.

If you want to go after the man’s family, well, that is something entirely different and altogether reprehensible, a truth Rice had to deal with this season while the Rebels spent 35 games searching for a magic answer on the court, offering play that ranged from inspired to forgettable and, ultimately, again falling short of stated goals.

The verbal abuse and harassment reached levels such that Rice’s wife considered not going to games and his eldest son was confronted at school. Fans typically range from reasonable sorts to impertinent idiots, but to direct one’s wrath at a coach’s wife or child is disgraceful beyond words. It’s the work of cowards, the exploits of fools.

Rice’s heart broke at times because of it, and yet he more than comprehends the task of returning UNLV to national prominence and all the pressures that go with it. He has won 51 games over two seasons, a mark that includes a mere handful of what would be considered notable road victories and doesn’t include a Mountain West regular-season title, league tournament championship or NCAA win.

But he is convinced Year 3 won’t have some of the mitigating circumstances as Year 2, given he will coach a team next season whose most important players all will be ones he recruited.

He is certain the style by which he wants to define the program is closer to becoming reality than most imagine. Maybe.

The Rebels haven’t run much at all in Rice’s two seasons — not to the level marketing slogans and recruiting pitches would have you believe — and yet his ability and that of assistants to sell such a vision has elevated UNLV’s recruiting to heights not seen at the school in decades.

I have no idea if Heath Schroyer wears a tie into the living rooms of recruits, but whatever he has been saying has worked. The UNLV assistant wasn’t much of a head coach at Portland State and Wyoming — which makes you wonder why he seems to have so much to do with scouts and in-game decisions — but has been the Rebels’ best recruiter.

But potential clouds are rolling over bright skies of years and years worth of fast-break baskets so many believe will find the Rebels with such a collection of present and incoming skill, points of caution to consider as more five-star recruits consider making UNLV home.

The Rebels need to fix a few major areas or risk becoming the same team over and over, one that sits in the upper echelon of a good conference, is talented enough to win 20 to 25 games and yet is home for good before the first week of NCAAs concludes.

It’s true. The repeat could end up being a rerun each March.

And avoiding it doesn’t begin by running more.

The Rebels might have offered impressive defensive statistics under Rice the past two seasons, but they have yet to truly buy in at that end of the floor under him. They haven’t shown a consistent commitment to defend, a passion for it, something that is not born in January but instead nurtured and evolved now, tomorrow, in April and over the summer.

Think of a Major League Baseball team working bunt coverages in spring training. If players don’t completely commit, it eventually will bite them at some point during the season.

Sort of like a walk-on from California shooting 6-for-6 from the field in an NCAA game, all on dunks.

I don’t care what numbers suggest. You’re not a good defensive team when that happens, not to the level you need to win those types of games. You either haven’t been coached well enough in the intricate but important fundamental details of defense or you’re not willing to work hard enough as a player to learn them.

No words can express how fundamentally flawed UNLV was defensively in the second half against Cal in the NCAAs. Zero. It was atrocious.

I will keep writing it: Rice should give complete control of the defense to associate head coach Justin Hutson. His methods. His terminology. His techniques. His way of motivating and challenging players’ pride to make them defend.

His portion of practice each day.

His allotted time in individual workouts.

Not some control. Complete control.

I just don’t believe Rice can or will do it.

Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference. Maybe Hutson lands a head coaching job before next season. Maybe not.

Somewhere along the line in the seedy world of AAU hoops, top recruits morphed into an entitled bunch lacking any level of hunger to be good defensively. So when a one-and-done talent like Anthony Bennett chooses your school and has one foot out the door to the NBA most of the season, the chances of him wanting to improve defensively are minimal at best.

Hutson knows defense, but if he stays and the kids he would be teaching don’t buy in to each and every inch of instruction, it won’t matter.

It is foolish to suggest Rice pass on future five-star recruits or one-and-done players. You take the best you can get or risk someone else getting and beating you with the same kid. You hope you’re better with the next than you were with the last.

But high-profile recruiting names also can back a coach into a corner, given that when a Bennett or Katin Reinhardt sign with UNLV, there is the inherent pressure to play them a ton or risk not getting the next big recruit, and yet allowing them too much rope when they can’t — or won’t — defend or adopt good shot selection becomes a detriment to your team some nights.

Rice faced some of that this season. Believe it. It’s a brutal cycle.

UNLV should be better defensively next year just with the presence of Khem Birch in the middle from the opening game, because great shot blockers have the ability to erase all sorts of mistakes on the perimeter.

It’s like when guard Jackson Emery erased mistakes outside when playing on the Brigham Young teams that Rice coordinated a break-neck offense. The Cougars weren’t great defensively. They just outscored people.

Maybe that’s what UNLV becomes the next few years and beyond under Rice. Maybe the Rebels fix their problems on offense (there are some glaring ones there, as well) and continue to put up good defensive numbers but aren’t all that committed to it.

Fans would love the high scores, although I’m not sure in this era of walk-it-up basketball and offenses stagnated by inconsistent whistles that a team could annually run to the level Rice desires. He might be five years and 5,000 feet too late, but it appears he will try.

That previously mentioned freedom, then, comes into the picture.

Rice gave too much of it this season. There is a fine line between instilling confidence in a kid struggling with his shot by telling him to shoot a 12th time when he has missed the previous 11 and demanding he show some sense of discipline during those stretches.

Rice didn’t sit kids enough. I mean really sit them. Really drive the point home by limiting playing time.

But there’s the cycle. How much do you believe he could have sat Bennett or Reinhardt or Bryce Dejean-Jones and not had it negatively affect the team?

There is no simple answer.

Rice obviously wants to be known as a player’s coach — I again could get into his senseless decision to allow players to tweet during the season and the negative public perception it often paints them with, but why bother? — but he can accomplish that and still tighten the ship a bit. He can be their friend and also have the correct amount of control. Coaches do it elsewhere.

He is an extremely bright person, and with intelligence comes the ability to adapt, to learn, to improve, to self-evaluate. He will do all the above. He will be better in Year 3 than 2 and better in Year 4 than 3. He’s that smart.

Rice was the best choice to lead UNLV two years ago and remains such today.

He deserves every opportunity to prove whether all this talent he is signing has both the ability and inclination to play as he wants. He deserves to coach his team and offer a system executed entirely by his players.

His family also deserves to be left alone, far from the inane words of cowards and fools. Get a life, out there. Get a grip.

UNLV has every chance to become the up-tempo, transition monster that advances deep in the NCAAs, the program Rice dreams about building.

But the Rebels also could become the same team over and over and over again, good but not great, talented individually but not united in a common goal, home far too early each March.

It’s on Dave Rice to fix the issues that would prevent the latter.

UC Irvine, this ain’t.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on “Gridlock,” ESPN 1100 and 98.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.