Ucla tonight just once
- Thread starter Buffel
- Start date
Nah, in Maui we were a little better I think. And it was neutral court. But we lost by by two. Of course UCLA hits a remarkable 23-24 from three free throw line, somewhere along those lines. And Welsh went for a career high and was automatic from the mid-range, really high percentage that game if I recall correctly. Very frustrating, winnable game. Pat struggled from the floor, Derrick didn't get nearly enough time. It's kinda fuzzy though.
Of course, we were able to save the trip by beating a ranked Indiana squad that was a S16 team that year.
We just an annoyance to UCLA. Sad to see. Oh well. As Bill Walton just said, our program has been a dumpster fire ever since Tarkanian left. Except for a brief moment of clarity with Lon Kruger, we haven't been anywhere near the team we are playing tonight. It's depressing.
The other commentator raised a good point as well - Menzies was screwed from the start. This is an unpopular opinion here, but maybe we shouldn't have fired him.
This all started spiraling out of control with Rice being fired. mid-season. Nuff said, then ppl talk about how 'bad' it was to fire him at that point in time, then bipolar their way right back into an opinion of doing it with football 2 weeks ago...
Where would we be today if the roster then was allowed to at least have a taste of Fisher the very next season...you know the very thing people cried about for 3 years prior?
Where would we be today if the roster then was allowed to at least have a taste of Fisher the very next season...you know the very thing people cried about for 3 years prior?
The losses back then were more exciting than the wins today.
I don’t recall a single person arguing the Rice firing was bad when it happened. The reaction was more like “It’s about time.” Some people did seem thrilled when he was fired because they thought it might save the season. And a lot of fans had wanted him fired for a while so they were thrilled when it happened.
Beard taking off was a big part of the problem too. But even if we hired Menzies instead of Beard, which would have given Menzies more time to put together a roster in his first season, would the program be much further along?
This could be true would we be that much further along? The jump he made in his second year was significant enough... But that few months would it had made a difference? Maybe keeping transfers and recruits?
B.S.!!!
You fire a coach mid-season for a video being leaked of him snorting cocaine off a hookers crack.
You NEVER fire a Rebel mid-season, period!
Vegas007 says he doesn’t remember anybody that wasn’t happy and nobody said anything. That’s about as revisionist as anything that’s been on the boards in 20+ years. Plenty didn’t like it, some thought another year was warranted. If you think everyone was happy, just look at the difference in attendance in the last Jan of Rice vs the first Jan of Menzies. Huge difference. And the level of enthusiasm, just caring at all, was tremendously huge.
And I know that I said, at the very moment it happened, that the potential to lose the program for 5 plus years was very real because of the way UNLV went about it and with the people they had in place making decisions. I was adamant about it, was vocal about it. It was very simple to see how, at the moment it happened, how badly this could backfire.
And here we are, looks like this season will amount to 4.5 seasons “lost”.
No Zimmerman in that game. Had food poisoning. I was at the game. Seems like light years ago that we actually had a chance to beat a good ranked team. Our schedule now is littered with teams ranked between 100-250.
It does seem like it's been a long time. We beat a ranked NV but that was in Reno, and we almost beat a good Arizona team but that was in 2017, I'm not sure if they where ranked but they ended being a 4 seed that year.
Don't worry about the schedule, they're changing that. Three years ago we played Oregon, Arizona State, TCU, Duke, and Oregon in the same season. I'm sure the people in charge will want to get back to that type of ambitious scheduling. Right now they need wins especially after they reset the rebuild process with this new coaching staff. Literally going back to square one.
That was a good Reno team. They were missing their very best player and their starting point guard in that game, but still credit to UNLV for going on the road and grabbing the win. Jojo was nuts that night.
The Arizona game was a great game, one of the best to watch during Menzies time. AZ was reeling when they came in here, I believe they were probably unranked when they got here because they'd dropped four straight. But still a ton of talent on that team. The breaking NCAA inquires and that garbage really threw them for a loop early on, that's why they had that long losing streak coming into the Mack.
I hate soft schedules because they don't challenge the players, it's what THEY actually want, it serves nothing as a smokescreen and stat-padding scheme. In year two, Menzies had a more veteran team (Sr PG, Sr SG, Jr SF, Jr PF (JC POY) and a highly rated center - and he dared to roll out the 319th ranked schedule. The worst in UNLV's history, by far, since those things had been tabulated. That's ducking people and looking to fool people with number of wins.
I got a lot more numbers if you want them, just let me know.
I dunno their loses where against good teams (NC State, Purdue, SMU) and they blew out Long Beach before coming to Vegas...
But playing lower tier power conference teams is the same as playing padded competition. But I agree with you, with the team progressing I assume we'd see something similar to the 16 season with a loaded pre season schedule.
But playing lower tier power conference teams is the same as playing padded competition. But I agree with you, with the team progressing I assume we'd see something similar to the 16 season with a loaded pre season schedule.
Nonsense. The 0-3 conference record was unacceptable for a team with that talent. They could beat a really good Indiana team and couldn’t beat teams in the Mountain West? Rice had to go. Keeping him would have been giving up on the season with a team that looked like it should have easily been a tournament team.
But then the team hired the wrong assistant to replace him, the Beard situation happened, and then Menzies was hired.
In other words, and then … downhill.
Accumulating the talent is a part of the game. Making it mesh is another.
The next guy did neither. Hence 27 home losses in three seasons …
Are you arguing that today, the program is in a better place? Last year? Year before? Year before?
Otz may turn it around here, doesn’t look like this season. Maybe next season … I hope so. We’ve waded in fruitlessness and unwatchable for far too long.
Some thought another year of Rice was warranted? I read comments on here back then and I’m not trying to troll and I honestly don’t remember that. I remember people getting sick of him after year 3 when that team didn’t come close to making the tournament. And 3 years after the great situation he started with was plenty of time to get something going, but then we saw another disappointing year in year 4, and year 5 started off promising but once again the team started fading right before they entered conference play, started 0-3 in conference and some of us had enough.
People constantly complained on here that he didn’t know how to coach. Who on here was impressed with him? He wasn’t being compared to Menzies back then. If he was being compared to anyone it was Kruger.
We’ve seen in the years after his first year that even with a better roster Menzies still struggled to win and still can’t put fans in the seats. His excuses started to run out after year one IMO and especially after year 2.
I think the program sucks today because Menzies was coaching. I do think firing Rice hurt the team a lot in Menzies first year, but since then Menzies had time to turn things around, improve the roster, and he still didn’t get much done.
He ended up third winningest UNLV coach behind two hall of famers.
Some supported mid season firing, which was obvious insanity and we see how that spiraled everything out of control and here we are four year later and counting in recovery mode. The painful part is it was simple to predict as a viable possibility. Some were fine with after season. Some wanted the last class, especially since it was a “different” class. They had talent but weren’t 5-star one and done types. Justin Jackson left after two years at Maryland, the rest are still playing D1, and that is something the program needed. But overall, it was pretty split. The thing is though, at least people cared enough to show emotion. That’s been gone, apathy rules the day.
The “can’t coach” argument. Do we say he can’t coach because he lost at CSU in OT when UNLV had more talent? Or do we say he can coach because he baited hall of famer Roy Williams into a tempo game and the Heels couldn’t handle it? Bad coach because we lost at Boise? Or good coach for finding the floor space and matchups to continually expose Arizona? What about having Dwayne and Cornish disrupt Indiana’s huddle late game, totally legal savvy move since it wasn’t a time out, and it totally disrupted and distracted Creen and Indiana from strategy? You want it both ways, but it doesn’t work that way.
My point with “coaching”, especially nowadays where 90 percent of the teams run the same stuff, is that the X’s and O’s aren’t near as important as you think. Guess what? Even Marvin knew basketball, the X’s and O’s, the techniques, the drills, etc. A far more important aspect to winning is roster management, personal management, recruiting/evaluation, etc. The players really do win and lose games. Players made Morton Poser and other one hit wonder no names look good. Just like they made them look like the couldn’t coach the other 15 seasons.
You’ll never really know, that’s why we say “we’ll see” … well, we saw with the last three, now we are starting to see year four.
