Carter was one of the few players that I felt tried overall, but that is not saying a lot considering most of the team did nothing to save Rice's job except LOSE. The attitude of all of these players has shown that they are playing for the coaching staff and not UNLV. This is the type of attitude that explains why they never played as a team and never improved in any of the years that Rice was coach from the beginning to the end of the season.
I keep reading everything about how badly treated Rice was by UNLV. I agree that TKM is an idiot and should be fired, but Rice and his players did absolutely nothing to show why Rice shouldn't have been fired. I am not sure how Rice was treated badly when he couldn't even beat the bottom teams in the MWC with what was considered one of the highest rated group of recruits in the country. If UNLV had played in a top level conference, they would have been lucky to win 10 games this last season.
Where TKM screwed up was in how she handled everything in regards to the removal and replacement of Rice:
1) They should have waited until the end of the season to replace Rice, or put either Augmon or Miller in as head coach when they decided to remove Rice.
2) If they had decided that they were going to hire an outside coach, then they should have fired the entire coaching staff at the end of the season instead of keeping the assistant coaches around. All keeping the staff did was cause friction after the season ended. Letting the coaching staff continue to have contact with the players, and continue to go on recruiting trips, is stupid when you know they these coaches are going to be working towards recruitment for their future jobs. We can all see what has happend due to keeping the coaching staff around prior to a new coach being hired.
3) TKM needs to learn to keep her mouth shut during the recruiting process. All her talking about the new coaching search does is make UNLV look bad when they get turned down by coach after coach. If a coaching candidate is a douche like Beard and Cronin, you don't go onto the radio and waste your time attacking their character as TKM did. We all know they are a douche, what TKM should have done was just put it behind her and move on without making any comments about the candidates.
4) You do not recruit coaches that do not want the job. The coaching search had a look of desperation with UNLV going after any coach that would listen instead of after a coach that wanted the job. I could see what was happening, but continued to support the recruiting with the hope that we would have a better outcome than most on this site believed would happen.
5) TKM needs to stop her BS name dropping. Every time she talked to the media she would mention how all of these coaches are helping her with the search for the new head coach for UNLV basketball. If she has all of these great contacts, why is everyone turning the position down? I really don't want to listen to her read off a bunch of coaches names who are helping her with a coaching search when she couldn't even find a candidate that wanted the job.
6) At least we have a coach who actually wants the job. Good luck to Menzies, and as for TKM, I hope the same train that wrecked into UNLV basketball runs he over!
