Nevada forward Warren Washington celebrates after scoring against Boise State in the quarterfinals of Mountain West Conference men's tournament on March 10, 2022, in Las Vegas.
Rick Bowmer/AP
Nevada Wolf Pack men’s basketball fans need to completely forget the recently completed season.
We understand the 13-19 season was disappointing, bewildering and frustrating. Nobody really saw it coming. Who ever thought a Steve Alford-coached team could finish six games under .500? Well, don’t dwell on it. Treat it like it never happened. It doesn’t signal the start of a Pack downfall and a long, tedious rebuild. This season was likely an anomaly, filled with an unpredictable pandemic-tainted schedule and a roster that seemingly was never whole mentally or physically all season.
The best news we can give you right now is that everyone will likely be back. All the important pieces, namely Grant Sherfield, Desmond Cambridge, Warren Washington, Will Baker, Tre Coleman and Kenan Blackshear will be back next season more experienced, more battle tested and more motivated than ever before. That’s what 13-19 does to a program. You become truly battle born.
You know what happened the last time the Pack went 13-19? It was 2010-11 and a young team under second-year head coach David Carter started the year 4-13. But that team matured as the year progressed, going 9-6 over the last 15 games, and came back the following year to turn in one of the most successful and entertaining seasons in Pack history. The 2011-12 Pack went 28-7, won the Western Athletic Conference regular season title and won two games in the NIT. So, yes, it’s been done.
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Oakland A’s fans, if there are indeed any still out there, have to be the toughest and most loyal fans in the history of sports. The A’s are at it again, giving away All Stars for unknown prospects, and are now putting together a roster that would not win the Pacific Coast League this year.
The A’s just traded first baseman Matt Olson to the Atlanta Braves and third baseman Matt Chapman to the Toronto Blue Jays for players nobody but scouts heard of before this week. A’s fans now probably wish the lockout never got settled because another tedious rebuild in Oakland has started. This needs to be the last time suffering A’s fans are asked to put up with this unfair never-ending test of their loyalty.
The city of Oakland has recently lost the Golden State Warriors of the NBA and the Oakland Raiders of the NFL and would become the Omaha of the west coast if it also lost the A’s. But it’s time the A’s either get a new ownership group with major league money or convince the city to finally build a state-of-the-art stadium that would enable the organization to generate enough income to keep its players.
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Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets cannot play home games because he is not vaccinated but he can sit in the stands and watch his team play. New York Yankees and New York Mets who are not vaccinated will also not be able to play home games this year. Players on opposing professional sports teams who are not vaccinated, though, can play in New York. It’s official. Absolutely nothing that happens in the city of New York makes sense anymore.
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Tom Brady has become a reality show character. Should we feel sad that a 44-year-old Brady retired for a mere 40 days, deciding that he would rather risk injury to his body and brain than spend time at home with his beautiful children and supermodel wife? No, of course, you should never feel sad for Brady, a man who has had more good fortune in life than any 10 million men put together.
But has he finally gone over the edge thanks to his obsessive high protein plant-based TB12 diet that only allows him to eat leaves and bark off the trees in his backyard? Why did he retire in the first place? Why did he give retirement just a 40-day trial? Does he not know he will be 45 years old in August and that he has accomplished everything possible the sport of football can offer? Why can’t he live without football?
“The past two months I’ve realized my place is still on the field and not in the stands,” Brady wrote on Twitter on Sunday. “I love my teammates and I love my supportive family. Unfinished business.”
What unfinished business? Why did Brady think his only options were playing or sitting in the stands? And did he really list his teammates before his family when mentioning the things he loves? Maybe it’s time Brady mixes in a few beers, a candy bar and a milkshake with those leaves and bark. He’s not thinking straight.
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Brady, by the way, owes a check to the guy who paid over $500,000 for the football he tossed for his last touchdown pass last season. A big check.
While it’s true that the person who paid the $500,000 is the only person in America who thought Brady was truly retired. But Brady needs to do the right thing, just the same. Brady needs to reimburse the unlucky auction winner. If Brady doesn’t want to send the guy a big check maybe he has something else he can offer. How about that supermodel wife with which he apparently thought 40 days in a row was more than he could handle.
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Former Wolf Pack basketball coach Eric Musselman has his Arkansas Razorbacks in the NCAA tournament again. Musselman, who led the Pack to three straight (2017-19) NCAA tournaments, guided Arkansas to the Elite Eight last year. Arkansas is a No. 4 seed this year and will play No. 13-seed Vermont in Buffalo on Thursday. It didn’t take Musselman, a genius at public relations, long to figure out a way to make his Razorbacks seem like the underdog.
“It’s kind of like a road game for us against Vermont, quite frankly,” Musselman said. “There’s not much of an advantage there at all.”
Musselman said pretty much the same thing in 2017 when the Pack had to play Iowa State in Milwaukee. The Pack lost that game, 84-73. Musselman also unwittingly gave some insight to what happened to the 2019 Pack, which lost in the first round of the tournament to Florida. “Non-focused teams come home early,” he said this week.
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Can the Mountain West win a NCAA tournament game this year? The Mountain West sent four teams (Wyoming, Boise State, San Diego State and Colorado State) to the tournament this year (the Pac-12 sent only three) and already one (Wyoming lost to Indiana in the First Four on Tuesday) has gone home.
The other three Mountain West teams, though, did receive opponents they can beat. Colorado State gets a 17-14 Michigan team that shouldn’t have even been invited to the tournament while San Diego State gets Creighton and Boise State gets Memphis. All we heard all year long from the Mountain West coaches is how difficult the conference was this year with so many talented teams. Well, it’s time to prove it.
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