Successes at Indiana and Cincinnati could show UNLV’s Menzies the way forward

Two players returned to Indiana’s roster when Tom Crean took over the proud basketball program in 2008, but even that didn’t speak to the dire situation he walked into after previous coach Kelvin Sampson resigned following an NCAA investigation.

One player, Brent Finkelmeier, played only 11 minutes the prior season. The other returnee, Kyle Taber, would be dogged by a knee injury and took only 14 shots all season.

With a hastily assembled roster that included six walk-ons, five freshmen and two junior college transfers, the Hoosiers went 6-25, the first of three successive losing seasons. Finally in the 2011-12 season, they went 27-9 and made the NCAA Tournament.

Indiana has since made the NCAAs three more times and twice won the Big Ten Conference regular-season title.

“Looking back, there’s no question that the Indiana job I took and the Indiana job it became were two different jobs,” Crean said. “People’s memories can be a little short-lived.”

UNLV heads into the 2016-17 season facing a similar situation, another historic program that has fallen on hard times with the school having taken the unusual step of firing a coach in midseason. What followed was a national embarrassment of a search in which one coach turned down the job and another accepted it, only to quickly leave for another school.

Marvin Menzies was hired April 16, putting him behind in the recruiting process. He quickly assembled a roster that had only three returning players — one starter, one player who was a regular part of the rotation and another who was injured most of last season.

UNLV went to the Bahamas in August not only for three extra weeks of practice and exhibition games, but so the virtually entirely new team could get to know each other.

“We’re still getting to understand who you’re playing with on the floor at different times,” Menzies said. “Certain guys make certain passes that other guys aren’t necessarily ready for, but I’m OK with that pass. It’s the process of learning who you’re on the floor with at any given time.”

Sporting News basketball writer Mike DeCourcy said Menzies’ situation reminds him not only what Crean inherited, but, ironically enough, what Mick Cronin stepped in to at Cincinnati in 2006. Cedric McGowan was the lone scholarship player returning.

The Bearcats went 11-19 that season and 13-19 the following year. Cincinnati posted its first winning season under Cronin in 2008-09, going 18-14, and made the first of six consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament in 2011.

“I think the circumstances of each changeover were difficult,” DeCourcy said. “For Indiana, there was still the lingering (Bob) Knight resentment, and so there were people they had to win over. And at Cincinnati, there was the lingering resentment of the removal of Bob Huggins. Mick had no connection to that, but there were still people who were angry at the administration, so some of that spilled over onto him just because he was standing there.

“That’s one advantage that Marvin has over both of them in that I think generally the fan base was ready for a new direction at UNLV.”

An attempt by the Review-Journal to reach Cronin, who turned down UNLV’s job offer March 25, was unsuccessful.

As for UNLV, little is expected of the Rebels, who were picked by the media to finish eighth in the Mountain West. Their season begins at 7 p.m. Friday against South Alabama at the Thomas & Mack Center.

“What you need in that scenario is you need your fans to understand that you’re just not going to make that quick jump right away,” ESPN analyst Dick Vitale said. “People want that instant gratification. They’ll be in for a little bit of a surprise. It’s not going to happen that quickly, but Marvin did a great job when he was at Louisville working for (Rick) Pitino. He did a solid job, obviously, at New Mexico State.

“To me, whenever you get a challenge like that, before you can really do a true evaluation, you’ve got to have a three-year waiting period. Having three players back on a roster is not going to get it done at the level they’re playing at that easily. Whatever he achieves now is going to be a plus.”

And when it comes to short-term success, Vitale said it was important to look at the big picture.

“I think a successful season would be what he does in recruiting,” Vitale said. “That’s the bottom line is right now you’re not thinking about wins, losses. You’re thinking about getting players. You’re thinking about getting people in your program. You’re thinking about setting a foundation for the future.

“The one beauty of being in Vegas is you’ve got a chance to get some players. You’ve got a chance to get some quality players. They’ve got good tradition, they’ve got an arena, they’ve got fans, and it’s obviously a place a lot of young people would like to be. You’ve got to take all those positives and sell those positives and get players, and the results will take care of themselves.”

DeCourcy said Menzies might be able to engineer a quicker turnaround than Crean or Cronin because the Rebels play in the Mountain West.

“It’s a great competitive conference, don’t get me wrong, but you’re not going into a conference where there are people that are laps ahead of you and it’s really difficult to close the gap,” DeCourcy said. “If you’re starting with basically an empty roster (at Indiana), look at what you have to catch up to at that time with Ohio State and Michigan State, and Michigan was starting to get it going.

“And the Big East at the time Mick was going in was at its absolute height in terms of being incredibly deep and competitive. In the year that Mick finally broke through at Cincinnati, they had 11 out of 16 teams make the tournament. I’m a huge admirer of the Mountain West as a conference. I’m not trying to put it down, but it’s not that kind of meat grind, so if you can put a couple of good recruiting classes together, you can be competitive more quickly.”

Few coaches know better than Crean the challenge that Menzies faces. Both are at programs with proud histories and demanding fan bases. Crean found victories away from the court that he said made a difference in showing the program was on the right track even when wins on the court didn’t always come.

“I never received more letters than when we announced (our players’ improved GPAs),” Crean said. “Our fans want to win, but they want to have success the right way. That’s what this program is.

“We wouldn’t have been able to get where we needed to be if not for the support of our former players and fans.”

Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2914. Follow @markanderson65 on Twitter.