Despite its quarterfinal loss to Colorado State in the Mountain West Tournament, literally no one is expecting the Nevada men’s basketball team to miss out on this year’s NCAA Tournament.
The Wolf Pack broke into the rankings in the AP Top 25 and USA TODAY Sports Coaches’ Poll earlier this week, landing at Nos. 23 and 22, respectively. And despite the Thursday night loss, Nevada was in every single one of the 106 predictions tracked by bracketmatrix.com; the consensus was that Nevada would land as a 7-seed when tournament selections are announced on Sunday.
Still, only conference tournament champions get automatic invitations to March Madness, so the 26-win Wolf Pack will have to await their fate. And strange things can happen when Selection Sunday rolls around, especially for teams outside the traditional basketball powerhouse conferences:
While we wait to find out where the Pack will play its postseason games, let’s take a look at some of the biggest snubs in Nevada basketball history.
2011-12: Under third-year head coach David Carter and starring Deonte Burton, Malik Story and Olek Czyz, Nevada had compiled a 26-6 record and a regular-season title in the Western Athletic Conference. But after losing in the WAC conference tournament, they had to settle for a No. 5 seed in the National Invitational Tournament instead of going to the Big Dance. They wrapped up their season with a quarterfinal loss to eventual NIT champion Stanford.
1996-97: If the Wolf Pack ever had an argument to get an at-large bid prior to the 2000s, it was this team under head coach Pat Foster, with Nevada Hall-of-Famer Faron Hand leading the squad to a 20-9 record and a first-place regular-season finish in the Big West’s eastern division. But a 20-win season against a lightly regarded Big West schedule didn’t impress the selection committee. The team ended its season with a second-round loss to Nebraska in the NIT.
1978-79: The Pack had a high-powered offense — 24th in the nation in points per game with 82.9 — and a home win against 14th-ranked Georgetown, but its 20-6 record in the West Coast Athletic Conference wasn’t enough to catch the attention of the selection committee.
1945-46: True, there was little chance that Nevada would head to the eight-team NCAA tournament in 1946. Under head coach Jake Lawlor, they had compiled a 26-4 regular season record — but their competition included several non-collegiate opponents, including the amateur Olympic Club of San Francisco, and military teams including the Fallon Navy and the Treasure Island Armed Guard. The team did get an invitation to the NAIA basketball tournament that year in Kansas City, where they had four starters foul out in a quarterfinal loss to Southern Illinois. Their .848 win percentage (28-5 overall) is still the third-best in school history.
Numerous Nevada women’s basketball seasons: A total of 296 women’s basketball teams have competed in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament, but the Wolf Pack is still on the outside looking in. Despite impressive squads like the 22-11 team in 2010-11 (which picked up regular-season wins against tournament participants Louisiana Tech and NC State) and the 1985-86 team that finished with a school-best .680 win percentage, no Wolf Pack women’s team has gone on to the NCAA Tournament.
A recent Review-Journal letter to the editor mischaracterized Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act, also known as the Clark County Lands bill. As the former executive director of the Nevada Conservation League, I wholeheartedly support this legislation, so I wanted to set the record straight.
Sen. Cortez Masto has been working on this bill for years in partnership with state and local governments, conservation groups like the NCL and local area tribes. It’s true that the Clark County lands bill would open 25,000 acres to help Las Vegas grow responsibly, while setting aside 2 million acres for conservation. It would also help create more affordable housing throughout the valley while ensuring our treasured public spaces can be preserved for generations to come.
What is not correct is that the money from these land sales would go to the federal government’s coffers. In fact, the opposite is true.
The 1998 Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act is a landmark bill that identified specific public land for future sale and created a special account ensuring all land sale revenues would come back to Nevada. In accordance with that law 5 percent of revenue from land transfers goes to the state of Nevada for general education purposes, 10 percent goes to the Southern Nevada Water Authority for needed water infrastructure and 85 percent supports conservation and environmental mitigation projects in Southern Nevada. This legislation has provided billions to Clark County and will continue to benefit generations of Southern Nevadans. Sen. Cortez Masto’s lands bill builds upon the act’s success.
So here’s the good news: All of the money generated from land made available for sale under Sen. Cortez Masto’s bill would be sent to the special account created by the 1998 law. Rather than going to an unaccountable federal government, the proceeds would continue to help kids in Vegas get a better education, bolster outdoor recreation and modernize Southern Nevada’s infrastructure.
I know how important it is that money generated from the sale of public land in Nevada stay in the hands of Nevadans, and so does the senator. That’s why she opposed a Republican effort last year to sell off 200,000 acres of land in Clark County and other areas of the country that would have sent those dollars directly to Washington.
Public land management in Nevada should benefit Nevadans. We should protect sacred cultural sites and beloved recreation spaces, responsibly transfer land for affordable housing when needed and ensure our state has the resources it needs to grow sustainably. I will continue working with Sen. Cortez Masto to advocate for legislation, such as the Clark County lands bill, that puts the needs of Nevadans first.
Paul Selberg writes from Las Vegas.
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Las Vegas High’s baseball team claimed a 3-2 home win over Coronado on Friday.
Las Vegas (9-13-1) next hosts Rancho at 10 a.m. Saturday. Coronado (13-14) hosts Chaparral at 3:30 p.m. Monday.
Contact Alex Wright at awright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Nevada’s jobless rate is holding steady, but the state is still adding jobs.
A new report from DETR shows February’s unemployment rate unchanged at 5.3 percent, with the labor force growing by nearly 3,800 people.
MORE ON FOX5: Nevada unemployment rate rises to 5.3% in January
Nevada now has about 1.6 million nonfarm jobs, up 2.2 percent over the past year and 1,500 more jobs than in January.
“This month’s report shows a strengthening labor market,” said David Schmidt, Chief Economist. ”Compared to the report for January, the pace of job gains in the past year increased from 1.9% to 2.2%, building on what was already the fastest pace of job growth in the country. While the unemployment rate remained stable, the labor force participation rate rose to 63.7%, 1.7 percentage points higher than the national level.”
In Las Vegas, employment ticked up by 1,100 jobs in February, about 0.1 percent, and is up more than 25,000 jobs compared to last year.
Reno added 1,000 jobs on the month, while Carson City shed about 200 but is still slightly above where it was a year ago.
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