Chris Murray

cmurray@rgj.com

In an unprecedented move, a born and raised Rebel is headed to the Wolf Pack.

Dave Rice, who was UNLV’s head basketball coach last season until being fired midway through the season, has been hired as an assistant at Nevada. The Wolf Pack isn't expected to make the official announcement until Wednesday, but the deal is done.

Rice, who played for the Rebels’ 1990 NCAA title team and its 1991 Final Four squad, was UNLV’s head coach from 2011-2016, posting a 98-54 overall record and 37-32 mark in the Mountain West. His 98 wins are the third most in school history. Rice led UNLV to three 20-win campaigns and two NCAA tournaments in his four full seasons. He was fired Jan. 10 after UNLV lost its first three games of the MW season to drop to 9-7 overall.

The Pomona, Calif., native was a graduate assistant for Jerry Tarkanian in 1991-1992 and a full-time assistant for the Rebels from 1994-2004 under three coaches (Tim Grgurich, Bill Bayno and Charlie Spoonhour) and spent nearly 20 years in Las Vegas over three three stints.

Pack hires Hufnagel, Dupree as assistant coaches

Rice left UNLV after Lon Kruger was hired in 2004 and joined Utah State as an assistant under Stew Morrill in 2004-05 before joining BYU in 2005. He was elevated to the Cougars’ associate head coach in 2008 and stayed in Provo until 2011 when he was hired by UNLV for his first head-coaching position.

At UNLV, Rice raised the Rebels’ recruiting profile and regularly brought in top-25 classes nationally, but the team went from 26 to 25 to 20 to 18 wins during his four seasons. He was an invaluable part of BYU’s staff and should be a significant asset for the Wolf Pack, which will have an entirely new assistant staff. Rice replaces Doug Stewart, who left Nevada for a larger title and raise as Tulane’s associate head coach.

Rice’s even-keel demeanor should be a good balance for coach Eric Musselman’s fiery personality. Rice also has coached in the MW for all but one season (2004-05) since the conference was created in 1999. After he was fired last season, Rice visited a Wolf Pack practice in advance of the Nevada high school state playoffs at Lawlor Events Center, where his son, Travis, played for Bishop Gorman High, which won the Division I state title.

Assistant coach Doug Stewart leaving Nevada for Tulane

After last season, Musselman did not retain assistant coaches Jay Morris and Jermaine Kimbrough, who landed at Wyoming. He replaced those two with Yann Hufnagel, who was fired by Cal following last season after an alleged sexual harassment, and Ronald Dupree, a six-year NBA veteran who was at LSU last season. Coupled with Musselman and Rice, the Wolf Pack has one of the best staffs on the West Coast.

The last coach, in any sport, to go from UNLV one season to Nevada the next was Mike Bradeson, who joined the Wolf Pack as the football team’s safeties coach prior to the 2010 season. Other notable shifts from one school to the other include Chris Ault going from a UNLV assistant to Nevada’s head coach in football in 1976 and Jeff Horton leaving Nevada as head football coach for the same job at UNLV in 1993 in a move dubbed, by Ault, “The Red Defection.”

It is believed Rice would become the first coach in the basketball history of the two schools to have been on the staffs of both Nevada and UNLV during his career. The closest any person has come to doing that is John Welch, who played at both Nevada and UNLV before serving as a graduate assistant with the Rebels under Tarkanian from 1986-89. Welch went on to become an assistant for four NBA teams, most recently with the Sacramento Kings this season.

Rice, who was a Rhodes scholar candidate at UNLV, has been philanthropically active in Southern Nevada. In 2012, he established the Dave Rice Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the education and support of health initiatives, including developmental disorders like Autism.

Rice is expected to be available to the media Wednesday.