LAS VEGAS -- I’ve been rewatching The Sopranos recently. One of my favorite quotes in the entire show comes in the pilot episode, when Tony is sitting in his therapist Dr Melfi’s office reflecting on a golden era that he was too young to fully experience.
“It's good to be in something from the ground floor,” Tony tells Dr. Melfi. “I came too late for that. I know. But lately, I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.”
For years, this was a quote I understood from afar but never truly felt the gravity of. Until I started following UNLV basketball. Even as a 13-year-old kid growing up in Upstate New York over a decade ago, I had a UNLV Runnin’ Rebels snapback and sweatshirt that was a staple of my teenage wardrobe.
I wouldn’t say I was a UNLV fan, but even a snotty-nosed teenager from far away knew those four letters meant something. Even in those days, still long removed from the glory of the 80s and 90s, you could turn on the TV and find UNLV in a ranked matchup with teams like Jimmer Fredette’s BYU Cougars or Kawhi Leonard’s San Diego State Aztecs. It was also around that time that UNLV was still one of the national leaders in attendance per game, with the oversized cardboard cut-outs in the crowd.
The environment that I saw permeating through that TV screen as a kid in Upstate New York getting my college hoops fix was a big reason why I decided to attend UNLV myself years later. But now when I watch old YouTube clips of those very games I watched from afar in my youth, it feels less like a distant memory and more like something I’m trying to remember from a past life. One that all of us who are associated with UNLV, past and present, are still trying to grasp a semblance of.
When I walk into the arena nowadays and see less than 1,000 paying fans, I feel like I’m in the ruins of a once great Colosseum. The Thomas & Mack Center was once home to the illustrious Gucci Row, immortalized forever in Hollywood pop culture and even in a Drake song. In a way, it’s sort of become just another Riviera or Tropicana. A relic of an era in Las Vegas that is gone to history and never coming back.
For UNLV’s basketball program to thrive in this modern era, it needs to reconcile with its past. You could write a multi-volume novel on all of the ill-advised decisions that UNLV administration has made throughout the last 35 years, we know, but the program will never move forward as long as these mishaps continue to define it.
The problem is that these grievances, from Dave Rice’s firing all the way back to Robert Maxson’s spineless betrayal of Jerry Tarkanian, have become as ingrained in the culture of UNLV basketball as their championship past once was. The reason why UNLV isn’t in Gonzaga’s position or better in 2025 is solely because of these self-inflicted wounds going back decades.
Whenever a UNLV coach is on the hot seat, you have a segment of folks that want the job to go to one of UNLV’s own. Make no mistake, that can’t happen during this next cycle. A decision will be made on Kevin Kruger this offseason and the indications are that he’ll need a Mountain West tournament title to earn an extension and keep his job. If/when that decision is made, UNLV needs to look beyond its past and its illustrious list of basketball alumni.
The next coach should preferably have no past ties to the program in any capacity and they should absolutely have experience winning at the Division I level. It should be someone young and fiery, actually fiery, not the manufactured stuff we see in Kruger’s sideline interviews. And most of all, the program needs someone who is willing to build this thing from the ground floor. Because the monuments that Jerry Tarkanian and company built last millennium are merely ashes now.
However, you have to disintegrate into ashes before you can truly begin to rebuild. We have to accept that what we’re looking at in 2025 is rock bottom. We can’t move forward until we do.