Clearly Ryan Miller is gone!

[Rebel1986]

Have not been reading much about anything to do with Ryan Miller the last few days and things became quite, now I have notice he again removed anything on his twitter account that says UNLV.

Ryan Miller
@CoachRyanMiller
250+ coaching wins, 4 NCAA appearances, 5 Reg. Season Titles, 1 conference tourney title, #4 best recruiter outside power 5 by ESPN


He is obviously gone, just hope the recruits still end up at UNLV.

 

[TomKingsley]

Only if the recruits were/are a good fit for the type of team Coach Beard is building. Not too worried about it - I really believe Coach Beard will turn the Rebels into winners.

 

[JTthe2nd]

Why would the recruits still come? Their bond was with the coaching staff that recruited them and they're apparently gone. I think most of the players would have done well under Beard, of course a few just wouldn't mesh but most would have. From the time Rice was fired this has been an embarrassing, amateurish fiasco. Handled better we would have seen at most 3 or 4 leave. Now Beard will start with essentially nothing. Worse than what Bayno had to work with and I never thought it'd get that bad again.

*I'll just use this space to once again congratulate the douchebag who chose Simon over Augmon and set the general tone of backstabbing that contributed to this toxic environment. Beard is going into this fight with both hands tied behind his back. I hope the fans back the hell off and give him the time he deserves to rebuild from this disaster.

 

[Rebel1986]

We really do need a point guard and it is very late to pick a new one up if Fisher leaves. Beard is going to need to do a really good job of recruiting comparable to the turn around at Little Rock.

 

[rebelluver]

Official

 

[Mjs_702]

Bummed.
Oh well, on we go. New era.

Fair to assume Fisher goes with him?

 

[willlevi]

Maybe he has too much Bobby Knight in him.
This will be a ridiculously long 5 years if Beard can't gain traction. The hand fractures and broken board will be interesting to watch.
I just don't get the salary they locked in to.

 

[TomKingsley]

Who was on that little Rock squad that won 30 games and an NCAA tourney game, and they won at SDSU. This Rebel squad was ripe for a tear down. Coach Beard will build a winner with his guys and it won't take anywhere near 5 years to accomplish. I am willing to wager they win more than 18 games next season...

 

[the Florian Trout]

We really do need a point guard and it is very late to pick a new one up if Fisher leaves. Beard is going to need to do a really good job of recruiting comparable to the turn around at Little Rock.

i really really really hope Beard can convince Fisher to still come. he's top 1-10 on my list (that doesn't mean anything).

 

[willlevi]

Who was on that little Rock squad that won 30 games and an NCAA tourney game, and they won at SDSU. This Rebel squad was ripe for a tear down. Coach Beard will build a winner with his guys and it won't take anywhere near 5 years to accomplish. I am willing to wager they win more than 18 games next season...

The MWC is not the Big Sky and unlike UALR, there are more the three quality opponents on the schedule.
#1 If he is forced to recruit nearly an entire roster, this is a team that he will be locked into for the first two years unless he plans to release kids.
#2 There aren't enough quality prospects still on the market to build an immediate team that can compete over a full schedule.
#3 Lack of regional ties will make it very tough to mesh a quality team together quickly.
#4 He is working with a divided fan base that did't fully support the hire.
#5 Unlike at ALR where you had a strong group of scrappy seniors with only a 3 underclassmen, he is building a team lack senior leadership and a bunch of guys that won't fully meet until the fall.

If I were to wager, this is a 10-12 win team next season. I can't see finding enough decent talent this late in the game.

 

[Bleed_Red702]

#1 If he is forced to recruit nearly an entire roster, this is a team that he will be locked into for the first two years unless he plans to release kids.
#2 There aren't enough quality prospects still on the market to build an immediate team that can compete over a full schedule.
#3 Lack of regional ties will make it very tough to mesh a quality team together quickly.
#4 He is working with a divided fan base that did't fully support the hire.
#5 Unlike at ALR where you had a strong group of scrappy seniors with only a 3 underclassmen, he is building a team lack senior leadership and a bunch of guys that won't fully meet until the fall.

If I were to wager, this is a 10-12 win team next season. I can't see finding enough decent talent this late in the game.

This thinking is just too silly. There aren't enough quality prospects? There are over 70 grad transfers right now. Then you have to take into account all your juco players (who beard and burg have good connections with). And the transfer list is over 400 right now and is expected to exceed 700.

I have no doubt Beard will be able to put a team together that will compete. Non con will be brutal and they will lose a lot, but they should be able to compete in conference play. The MW sucks. I expect the team to go over .500 for conference play and I expect them to win more than 12 games.

Watch beard place higher than 7th with a brand new roster in his first year.

 

[Bullmastiff 1]

The MWC is not the Big Sky and unlike UALR, there are more the three quality opponents on the schedule.
#1 If he is forced to recruit nearly an entire roster, this is a team that he will be locked into for the first two years unless he plans to release kids.
#2 There aren't enough quality prospects still on the market to build an immediate team that can compete over a full schedule.
#3 Lack of regional ties will make it very tough to mesh a quality team together quickly.
#4 He is working with a divided fan base that did't fully support the hire.
#5 Unlike at ALR where you had a strong group of scrappy seniors with only a 3 underclassmen, he is building a team lack senior leadership and a bunch of guys that won't fully meet until the fall.

If I were to wager, this is a 10-12 win team next season. I can't see finding enough decent talent this late in the game.

Will-

If your basketball predictions are anything like your football predictions UNLV will win 20+ games and contend for the MWC title.

 

[Rebel1986]

Will - what group of seniors? From what I understand they only had 5 returning scholi and one walk on returning players when he took over.
As for this strong group of scrappy seniors and only 3 underclassmen?

ALR - Had a total of six seniors. Of those 6 seniors, two are transfers that sat out, two are transfers that were able to play right away, and only two were returning seniors. Unless you are counting those players he recruited to the team, I am not sure where you got that strong group of scrappy seniors from two players who returned? The leadership came from a combination of new and existing players that only played together for a month before starting a season that included 30 wins!

The 5 top scorers on the team - 3 were new players to the team
The 5 top re-bounders on the team - 2 were new players to the team

Beard walked into a very similar situation at Arkansas Little Rock and was able to win 30 games in his first year. Not saying they will win 30 games, but this conference isn't very good which is obvious by the fact that the best team in the conference was owned at home by ALR.

Beard easily beat SDSU at SDSU! When is the last time UNLV beat SDSU at SDSU? UNLV has lost 8 straight time to SDSU and last won in February 2013. Obviously ALR played way better against SDSU then UNLV could even when they had 8 attempts, including 5 of those on the home court and couldn't win a single game.

ALR also was able to beat the number 5 seed in the NCAA tournament. When is the last time UNLV went to the tournament, or beat a higher seeded team???

The simple fact is that he was able to take a mess and turn it into a program that in my opinion was better than UNLV this last year.

 

[UnlvRebelde]

I fully expect the next 2 years to be very bad. But im giving beard a pass for those 2 years, considering it a hangover of the toxic rice years.
Coach rice completely destroyed everything coach kruger built. So once again things need to be built from the ground up.Im giving coach beard 5 years to do that.

Coach beard was not on my list of coaches id like to run my program, nor would i pay him as much as they are. But here we are, go rebels!

 

[bcvegaspt]

The MWC is not the Big Sky and unlike UALR, there are more the three quality opponents on the schedule.
#1 If he is forced to recruit nearly an entire roster, this is a team that he will be locked into for the first two years unless he plans to release kids.
#2 There aren't enough quality prospects still on the market to build an immediate team that can compete over a full schedule.
#3 Lack of regional ties will make it very tough to mesh a quality team together quickly.
#4 He is working with a divided fan base that did't fully support the hire.
#5 Unlike at ALR where you had a strong group of scrappy seniors with only a 3 underclassmen, he is building a team lack senior leadership and a bunch of guys that won't fully meet until the fall.

If I were to wager, this is a 10-12 win team next season. I can't see finding enough decent talent this late in the game.

I will take that wager.

$100 and I'll take over 12.5 wins while you take the under. Deal?

 

[willlevi]

5 seniors and 9 juniors for ALR last season listed on the roster. The team went 3-1 OOC versus teams with winning records while losing 2 of their conference games to teams with less than 10 wins.
http://lrtrojans.com/roster.aspx?roster=110&path=mbball

With a schedule ranked 232 in the nation while playing in the Sun Belt, the 17th ranked conference with a 0.485 RPI, ALR benefitted from the lack of opportunities to lose more than being a great basketball team.
http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_398_Men.html

The UNLV schedule ranked 113 in the nation while playing in the MWC, which is tied as the 10th ranked conference with a 0.514 RPI
http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_309_Men.html

I hope there is enough out clauses in the contract that doesn't trap the program if Beard is more one year wonder. I hope he is actually the coach they believe they hired.

https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/rpi-ranking/rpi-rating-by-conf

 

[bcvegaspt]

5 seniors and 9 juniors for ALR last season listed on the roster. The team went 3-1 OOC versus teams with winning records while losing 2 of their conference games to teams with less than 10 wins.
http://lrtrojans.com/roster.aspx?roster=110&path=mbball

With a schedule ranked 232 in the nation while playing in the Sun Belt, the 17th ranked conference with a 0.485 RPI, ALR benefitted from the lack of opportunities to lose more than being a great basketball team.
http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_398_Men.html

The UNLV schedule ranked 113 in the nation while playing in the MWC, which is tied as the 10th ranked conference with a 0.514 RPI
http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_309_Men.html

I hope there is enough out clauses in the contract that doesn't trap the program if Beard is more one year wonder. I hope he is actually the coach they believe they hired.

https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/rpi-ranking/rpi-rating-by-conf

Our strength of schedule was 100, there's was 120.

What about that bet? $100? More? Less?

I'm 100% serious.

 

[Rebel1986]

If your going to put those numbers out there regarding strength of schedule, do not ignore the fact that the RPI for ALR was 42 while that for UNLV was 147. What that means is that ALR would have been favored over UNLV. Every year UNLV would win a couple of games against good teams, but would go backwards as the season went on because they not only would not get better, they would get worse as the seen progressed, which happend every year under coach Rice.

4 eligible seniors and 8 eligible junior that mostly came as transfers not players that played together for years, they can do the same thing at UNLV for recruiting.

You can also look at the basketball composite http://www.masseyratings.com/cb/compare.htm which had UNLV at 122 and ALR at 53. Any way you look at it, most everyone would have made ALR a heavy favorite to win verse UNLV. Every rating service out there would have favored ALR to have a much better record playing a comparable schedule. It is great UNLV played a better schedule, but they lost a lot of those games.

 

[Bullmastiff 1]

5 seniors and 9 juniors for ALR last season listed on the roster. The team went 3-1 OOC versus teams with winning records while losing 2 of their conference games to teams with less than 10 wins.
http://lrtrojans.com/roster.aspx?roster=110&path=mbball

With a schedule ranked 232 in the nation while playing in the Sun Belt, the 17th ranked conference with a 0.485 RPI, ALR benefitted from the lack of opportunities to lose more than being a great basketball team.
http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_398_Men.html

The UNLV schedule ranked 113 in the nation while playing in the MWC, which is tied as the 10th ranked conference with a 0.514 RPI
http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_309_Men.html

I hope there is enough out clauses in the contract that doesn't trap the program if Beard is more one year wonder. I hope he is actually the coach they believe they hired.

https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/rpi-ranking/rpi-rating-by-conf

This sounds oddly like your doom and gloom Sanchez rant last year.

The team Beard inherited won 13 games the year before. They won 30 games this last year. He took equal talent vs equal talent and won 17 more games. That shows good coaching.

Unlike UNLV who somehow managed to get worse every year, despite on paper having superior talent. That shows questionable coaching.

If I have a bunch of 2* guys, and I beat other teams with 2* guys, thats good.

If I have 4/5* guys and I lose to 2/3* guys, that is bad.

 

[WeMissYouShark]

I agree with willevi in principle. You can't draw a parallel between a 30-5 Sun Belt season and the potential for that team in the MWC. Different animals, whether the MWC is down or not. His first year will be mostly with 2*s that never played together until official fall practice. 2*s can compete in Sun Belt, in MWC, they are fighting both equal or superior players and brutal travel+altitude.

Do I think Beard can get where he wants to be? I do. Do I think it will happen in 2016/2017? Not on your life.

I'm hoping for 17 wins at best next season, but I'm giving him that year to build. If he gets Carlos + 1 of our two other existing commitments, and if we can nab Gilmore, and if Carter stays, and if they gel well as a team and buy into his system early on, I think we can go 20 or more. However, I think Carlos is the only current commit that follows through.

I do think there are enough OOC cupcake games and home MWC cupcake games to net 12 wins even if he fields a bad team.

 

[rebelluver]

I am not sure why some people think this is a complete rebuilding job and we have to completely start over.

As far as which players we end up with and starting a new team basically from scratch, yeah, we are starting over.

But, we are starting with world class facilities and a big basketball fan base. That is a pretty huge head start for a head coach, one that he didn't have at ALR.

I am not saying we will approach the 30 wins, or even 20, but this is not going to be a team that has a 8 win season, followed by a 15 win season, followed by a 20 win season, etc.

None of this matters yet of course since nobody even knows who is on the team yet.

I think it is nice that so many fans are being realistic for once, but I think a few over corrected.

 

[LVKryptonite]

Hard to dream. After having your heart ripped out so many times it becomes old, and you think I won't follow the rabbit down the hole again. But then you say, "This time it will be different". I'd like to see some of the guys return and see what it's like under Beard. But I understand the risk of a new coach and the feelings of betrayal. At the same time, another coach, another system, another set of risks. If Pat, Ben and maybe someone else would just say, "I'm coming back", that would take less of the unknown from the other guys to decide. I have high hopes for Beard. But, I am still shaving....most days. I hope to be sporting a Duck Dynasty next March. Crap there I go again thinking the glass is half full of Kool Aid.

 

[manic water]

I have high hopes for Beard. But, I am still shaving....most days.

I haven't touched a blade since Beard was announced...