UNLV’s Kunzer-Murphy has tough call to make on Rice

Tina Kunzer-Murphy was named interim athletic director at UNLV in July 2013. Six months later, she landed the job on a full-time basis.

And on Friday, almost two years and countless news conferences later, she just might have uttered the most important words of her tenure.

“I need to do what’s best for UNLV,” Kunzer-Murphy stated.

The easy part is saying it.

The hard part — perhaps the emotional, excruciating, incredibly taxing part — is discovering what that is and following through when it comes to the future of the men’s basketball program.

Maybe she does nothing.

Maybe that’s what is best.

Maybe not.

Dave Rice just concluded his fourth season as coach, his second straight without a postseason appearance, and it is no secret today that his job security is hardly strong as an oak.

The Rebels finished 18-15 this season, seventh in a bad 11-team Mountain West and were bounced from the conference tournament on their home court in the quarterfinals.

Rice is scheduled to meet with Kunzer-Murphy on Monday, at which time he will “further articulate my vision and talk about how bright I think our future is.”

He predicts a breakthrough season in 2015-16, which I would hope at least means making the NCAA Tournament.

He insists on holding himself to a higher standard.

Which means, yet again, it’s about next year.

There is this theory (a smart one, in fact) in such situations that goes like this: If you as an athletic director believe the person running your program is the right coach, the best fit, the one who gives you the ultimate chance to win on a long-term basis, the leader that deep inside your gut you are certain is the incomparable figure needed for a particular team, you keep him.

You support him unconditionally.

You move forward with him.

But if you search your soul and do your research and allow your eyes to be a guide and look in the mirror and know he isn’t the right guy, you must go in a different direction. Six months longer. One season more. Two seasons. Five. It doesn’t matter. You just end up treading water.

If you don’t think he’s the guy, then he’s not the guy.

So it’s on Kunzer-Murphy to decide. To understand that the reality of UNLV basketball today is far different from the perception many have of it. To know that this is a program with only three NCAA Tournament wins in 24 years, with one conference regular-season title (it was shared) in 15 years, that hasn’t won its league tournament since 2008, despite playing the event at the Thomas & Mack Center.

To accept that UNLV in 2015 is a nobody on the national scene.

With the knowledge it can be a somebody again.

UNLV has the infrastructure needed to win big. Really big. It has the fan base and facilities and access to players. It has everything needed to make deep NCAA runs. It owns many of the significant qualities that Final Four teams exhibit. It doesn’t have to forever point to 1990 for its last true glorious moment.

It can be great again one day.

But whatever she decides, Kunzer-Murphy must do so based on a long-term vision and not out of fear of short-term losses. She extended Rice’s contract last year after he gained some leverage with an offer from South Florida, but the outcry from boosters and fans at the time had far more to do with keeping a heralded recruiting class than any positive feeling about Rice’s job performance. He was barely mentioned by those supporting the extension. It was all about the recruits.

You could make the argument his extension was based on a few tweets from those then-prep players, stating that if Rice departed UNLV, they would play elsewhere.

Kunzer-Murphy can’t base this decision now on the same premise.

Or at least she shouldn’t.

It’s a trap athletic directors fall into all the time, deciding a program’s immediate future because of what recruits might do. All that does is cover a big issue with a small Band-Aid. It’s not a long-term vision for success. It’s a bad way of doing business, about as shortsighted a maneuver as one could execute.

Fact: LeBron James isn’t walking through those doors in the fall.

No one is that important.

Is Rice the right guy?

Is someone else?

Is it Ben Howland, a proven coach who led UCLA to three straight Final Fours and has been the popular leading candidate of countless local rumors the past week as the person some boosters covet most for the job?

Is the right guy an experienced one, a defensive-minded one, one whose team will run, and I mean really run?

More than anything else, and this is assuming Kunzer-Murphy has the final say on the matter and will be supported by a new president, she needs to remove herself from the chatter. From those boosters whose wallets allow their opinions to be heard. From people with agendas, be it to keep certain coaches on a staff or players on a team or interested recruits on a telephone.

There is a lot of chatter in these parts. A lot of pointless noise.

Kunzer-Murphy needs to sit in a room with someone she trusts impeccably, someone who knows basketball. Really knows basketball. Someone, perhaps, who has an unbiased view and no motive to push. Maybe she knows Jerry Colangelo of USA Basketball. He would be a fabulous source of information. Maybe she knows someone like him.

This is a decision that reaches beyond nitpicking X’s and O’s, about why the Rebels are so bad defensively for stretches and can’t screen properly to save their lives and lose so many close games. About why several teams are young and inexperienced and have injuries, but seem to play a whole lot better and smarter.

This isn’t about next season or even the one after that.

This is the business of wins and losses. It can be cruel and unforgiving. But it’s also about the most prominent team in this state, about a sport that is a big part of the face that defines UNLV.

Most everyone around here lives, recalls and talks about the good ol’ days of Runnin’ Rebels basketball. Most everyone exists in the past when it comes to this particular team. But those days are gone and have been for a long time.

These aren’t good days.

But better days, similar days to that national championship run, are possible.

The question is, who is the right guy to make it happen?

If she searches her soul and does her research and allows her eyes to be a guide and concludes it’s Dave Rice, then Kunzer-Murphy should move forward with him and offer unconditional support in helping him deliver his promised bright future. Rice is a good man and wants to win here more than anything else. He wants to win so bad, it hurts.

But if in her gut Kunzer-Murphy believes he’s not the guy and knows it when looking in the mirror, then he’s not the guy.

And one more season won’t change that.

Treading water.

That’s the cruel reality of this business.

What’s best for UNLV?

It’s on her to decide.

Her decision. Her legacy.

The future of a program that one day could be great again with the right guy.

Whether he’s already here or not.

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 100.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.