How Wolf Pack went from NCAA Tournament regular to irrelevant

Not too many years ago, it seems, the Wolf Pack basketball team was a prominent national program.

Nevada's arrival on the national stage came in 2004 when it knocked off the No. 2 team in the nation, Gonzaga, to reach the Sweet 16. That was followed by three more NCAA Tournament appearances.

From 2003-07, the Wolf Pack went 106-27, won at least 25 games each season, won four NCAA Tournament games, became one of the best teams on the West Coast, developed a pipeline of players to the NBA and turned a typically apathetic group of Nevada fans into a group of ardent supporters.

The majority of the banners that hang at Lawlor Events Center came from that period, the halcyon days of Wolf Pack basketball. But things are different now. Far different. Nevada is in the midst of its third straight losing season and fourth losing campaign in five years. A decade after being a national program, the Wolf Pack is irrelevant on the national stage, with Lawlor sitting half-empty on most nights.

So, how did the Wolf Pack get to this point?

Many fans would answer by saying, "The hiring of David Carter," but that's nowhere near the full truth. The tide turned far before he took over the program as the team's head coach in 2009. Here's a look at how Nevada went from a regular NCAA Tournament team to its current state in the span of a decade.

Early-entries killed Wolf Pack

Outside of Memphis, no non-Power 5 team has had more hits in the form of early-entries than Nevada, which lost five players to the NBA draft before their senior seasons since their Sweet 16 run in 2004.

Kirk Snyder, Ramon Sessions, JaVale McGee, Armon Johnson and Luke Babbitt all left school early, with varying levels of NBA success. But the impact at Nevada was heavy. The loss of McGee and Babbitt, both sophomores, were particularly impactful. Power 5 schools can replace NBA talents. Mid-majors can't.

These losses helped short-circuit Nevada's time at the top. Could you imagine a 2008-09 team with a starting five of Johnson-Brandon Fields-Malik Cooke-Babbitt-McGee, with Dario Hunt and Joey Shaw off the bench? Or a 2010-11 team with Johnson-Deonte Burton-Olek Czyz-Luke Babbitt-Hunt with Malik Story and Jerry Evans Jr. off the bench. Both would have happened if not for the early-entries.

Both of those teams would have had Sweet 16 written all over them, especially the second group, which realistically could have challenged for an Elite Eight or better had early-entries not hit the Wolf Pack.

Nevada didn't build off success

The Wolf Pack's run of NCAA Tournament appearances from 2003-07 should have resulted in something tangible, a new practice facility, a renovated Lawlor Events Center, an increased basketball budget, a larger purse for coaching salaries. But it didn't result in any of those things.

Nevada didn't build on its success like mid-major powerhouses Gonzaga, Butler, VCU and Xavier. Outside of creating great memories and adding banners to Lawlor, the Wolf Pack didn't continue to build the infrastructure of its program to support future success, a huge mistake by the administration.

Business 101 tells you that to grow your business you have to reinvest in it. Nevada didn't do that and fell behind in the arms race. It should have struck when the iron was hot, especially considering how strong the economy was (and how large potential donations could have been) from 2003-07. Nevada did nothing to its infrastructure that would woo potential high-level coaches and recruits.

In fact, the only substantial change Nevada made during this period was a plan to raise season-ticket prices and reseat Lawlor, a move that was eventually scrapped when fans revolted against the idea.

Coaching hasn't been as good

The Wolf Pack's current coaching isn't as good as its coaching in the mid-2000s, which isn't so much a criticism of the current staff as it is a compliment to the staffs of those NCAA Tournament teams.

In addition to Trent Johnson, the best basketball coach in program history and one of the top-five coaches in any sport in Wolf Pack history, those Nevada staffs included Mark Fox, David Carter, Dedrique Taylor and Josh Newman, who all became Division I or D-II head coaches (and Doug Novsek was a finalist for a D-I job). These Wolf Pack staffs were loaded with talent and among the best on the West Coast.

Not only did Nevada do a good job of getting hard-working, underrated players on campus, the staff turned their potential into production. The depth of talent on Nevada's coaching staff was always an underrated part of its success. Eventually that talent ended up spreading out across the nation.

Johnson went to Stanford, Fox to Georgia, Newman to Arkansas-Fort Smith and Taylor to Arizona State and then Cal-State Fullerton. It might have been impossible for Nevada to keep Johnson, who always viewed Stanford as his dream job, but Nevada fans will long ponder what could have been had he stayed.

Wolf Pack ignored character

Toward the end of the Fox era, the Wolf Pack started bringing in some questionable characters.

In 2007, Tyrone Hanson was kicked out of the program after going to a Halloween party that resulted in him being beaten unconscious and robbed at the party where three people were shot to death.

In 2008, three Wolf Pack players (Fields, London Giles, Ahyaro Phillips) were arrested after allegedly stealing from Scheels, the sporting goods store, with Fields falling into a season-long slump after.

In 2009, just days after Fox left for Georgia, Phillips brought a gun on campus to confront a group of football players after getting in a fight with one of them days prior. The gun belonged to one of Phillips' teammates (the police report indicated it was Armon Johnson), and Phillips was kicked off the team.

These incidents had an effect on and off the court. Having good chemistry and a selfless team mindset is tough when you have players like this on the team. It also impacted the team's recruiting, as a couple of recruits (and their parents) decided to take a pass on Nevada given the spate of off-the-court issues. Carter has restored the character, but has had trouble finding the talent.

Recruiting has fallen off

The lifeblood of any program is recruiting. Nevada hit big with under-recruited players like Snyder, Nick Fazekas, Kyle Shiloh, Kevinn Pinkney, Garry Hill-Thomas, Sessions and McGee during its tournament run.

Since then, there's been too many recruiting misses and not enough hits.

Fox mostly did an excellent job, grabbing Sessions, McGee, Johnson, Babbitt – four NBA players – in his five years as the team's head coach, but he missed on many late, including guys like Hanson, Phillips, Giles, Lyndale Burleson, Richie Phillips, Matt LaGrone, Devonte Elliott, Mark McLaughlin and others.

These misses, plus the early-entries of Babbitt and Johnson, led to a complete rebuild of the program in 2010-11. Exactly one year after Fox left for Georgia, only one scholarship player from his tenure was still on the roster. That left Carter in the tough position of trying to recruit an entire team in one recruiting class, the 2010 class. The 2010-11 rebuild truly marked the end of Nevada's dominance.

Carter has had his recruiting successes with Burton, Story, Czyz, Evans and Cole Huff, but he's missed far too often, especially in the 2010 class, which included busts like Elliott (a holdover from Fox), Illiwa Baldwin, Kevin Panzer, Jordan Finn, Derrell Conner and Jordan Burris. That class set Nevada back and recruits Patrick Nyeko, Marko Cukic, Richard Bell and Stelios Papafloratos didn't really plan out, either.

Even Carter's big gets, players like Marqueze Coleman, a top-100 player by Scout.com and Wooden Award winner, and D.J. Fenner, the Washington player of the year, haven't lived up to big expectations.

Transfers have hurt the program

In this era of college basketball, teams have to expect the unexpected transfers.

Two in particular have killed the Wolf Pack.

The first was wing player Malik Cooke, who was the kind of glue player every coach loves and every team needs. He left prior to the 2009-10 season (if you put him on that team, the Wolf Pack almost certainly makes the NCAA Tournament) and landed at South Carolina.

The second was Huff, who transferred after last season in search of a team that would use him more on the perimeter and less in the post (he landed at Creighton). Put him on this year's team and Nevada isn't an NCAA Tournament squad, but it's around .500 and far more competitive in the MW.

The Wolf Pack has had other transfers (Panzer, Elliott, Finn, Burris, Bell), but those haven't hurt nearly as much as Cooke or Huff. Those two departures were essentially the equivalent of losing an early-entry player to an NBA draft. They weren't quite NBA-level players, but both were all-league caliber.

Wolf Pack didn't catch the breaks

Nevada hasn't caught very many breaks since those NCAA Tournament days.

It's come up just short in some program-altering recruiting battles. For example, Fox nearly landed Klay Thompson, but his dad wanted him to go to a Pac-12 school, so he went to Washington State. Thompson is now one of the best shooting guards in the NBA. Think Nevada could have used him?

During the Carter era, the loss of 7-footer Chris Brown (to blood-clotting problems) and the eligibility issues surrounding West (he wasn't eligible until around midseason in 2013-14) submarined last season.

Then there are the on-the-court near-misses.

In 2010, Fields missed a defensive rebound with Nevada leading New Mexico State with 35 seconds left in a WAC Tournament semifinal. If he gets that rebound, which he had his hands on, Nevada wins that game and moves into the WAC final, where it likely would have won to reach the NCAA Tournament.

In 2011-12, Nevada was the No. 3 team left out of the NCAA Tournament, a bubble casualty. If one or two committee members change their mind, Nevada reaches the tournament and history changes.

Reach the NCAA Tournament in one of those years and the Wolf Pack is looking at just a three- or four-year Big Dance drought rather than the current eight-year drought. That's a big difference.

(It is worth pointing out the Wolf Pack was fortunate to have two NBA players, Babbitt and Johnson, grow up in Reno and decide to stay home, which helped prolong Nevada's window of success. Had that not been the case, the demise of Wolf Pack basketball would have been hastened by a couple of years).

The move to the Mountain West

The move from the WAC to the Mountain West in 2012-13 was good for the Wolf Pack. It provided stability that didn't exist in the WAC, which is currently held together with glue and tape. But it also threw Nevada into a much more competitive environment with higher-resource teams.

The Wolf Pack is now playing with the big boys on a little boy budget. Nevada's basketball budget is $2.1 million, the second lowest in the conference. San Diego State, for example, spends $6.5 million a year on basketball. Colorado State is at $4.3 million. New Mexico at $3.7 million. And UNLV at $3.5 million.

Nevada's budget worked in the WAC. It doesn't work in the MW. Money doesn't guarantee success, but a lack of money almost always guarantees a lack of success. The Wolf Pack is essentially working with 60 percent of the average MW budget. It's unrealistic to expect NCAA Tournament appearances (or top-half finishes in the MW, for that matter) with these financial limitations.

Additionally, the MW has some of the best coaches this side of the Mississippi, with Steve Fisher (SDSU), Larry Eustachy (CSU), Larry Shyatt (Wyoming) and Stew Morrill (Utah State) among the most respected coaches in the nation. Their pay also reflects that. This point ties back to the one above about Nevada not investing in its product by increasing coaching salaries and the budget during its seasons of success.

The future

It wouldn't have been impossible for Nevada to sustain its Sweet 16 success and stay nationally relevant.

It has happened at schools the same size of Nevada in recent years.

After VCU's Final Four appearance, the Rams paid big to keep Shaka Smart and have stayed a Top 25 team. Wichita State reached the Final Four in 2013 and is 56-4 since. Butler improbably reached the national title game in 2010 and even more improbably reached the title game again in 2011. Gonzaga has been a hallmark for mid-major program building, reaching the NCAA Tournament in 13 of the last 14 seasons. Xavier has stayed successful despite losing two excellent head coach (Thad Matta; Sean Miller).

But Nevada wasn't able to sustain its success from 2003-07, the early-entries, the depletion of talent on the roster and the coaching staff, the recruiting misses on talent and character, the inability to build up the facilities and budget required to be successful, the move to the more difficult MW and just plain bad luck all playing a part in Nevada's fall from tournament team to something far less.

We've outlined how it happened. Now the question is this: How does the Wolf Pack get back to its form from 2003-07? Or, perhaps more appropriately, is that even possible again?

Columnist Chris Murray provides insight on Northern Nevada sports. Contact him at cmurray@rgj.com or follow him on Twitter @MurrayRGJ.