Nevada’s Tre Coleman, pictured last season, has played in a record 148 games for the Wolf Pack, but a broken hand might have ended his career prematurely.
Photo by Steve Ranson.
Sports Fodder:
The Nevada Wolf Pack men's basketball team now heads into the most important part of its schedule without a huge portion of its identity.
Tre Coleman, arguably the Wolf Pack's heart and soul and heartbeat over the past five seasons, has likely played his final college basketball game because of a hand injury suffered at San Jose State on Feb. 14. The Wolf Pack, which lost at Colorado State, 79-71, on Tuesday without Coleman, has just five games remaining in the regular season before the Mountain West tournament, March 12-15 in Las Vegas.
A memorable era of Wolf Pack basketball might now be over with the likely end of Coleman's career.
Coleman was, without question, the Pack's best all-around defender since he came to Nevada for the 2020-21 season. Coach Steve Alford would just put Coleman on the opposing team's best scorer and not worry about that opposing player taking over games. Coleman was a luxury few coaches in this era ever find.
Coleman, though, was also an underrated and often under-utilized scorer simply because he played alongside talented scorers such as Grant Sherfield, Jarod Lucas, Kenan Blackshear, Will Baker, Desmond Cambridge, Nick Davidson, Kobe Sanders and others at Nevada. But Coleman, when called upon, could score, as we've seen the last three seasons when he scored 20 points or more four times and 15 or more eight times.
Scoring the ball, though, was never Coleman's priority. That's because nobody understood better than him that there were plenty more areas in which to contribute to a victory. Nobody the last five seasons was asked to do as many things by Alford as Coleman. And nobody appreciated Coleman's efforts more than Alford (a fellow Indiana Hoosier), who gave the 6-foot-7 forward a program-record 131 starts.
Coleman, if he has indeed played his last game, also appeared in a program-record 148 games, shattering Dario Hunt's 135-game standard (Coleman played one more season than Hunt because of the 2020-21 COVID-19 season).
How will Coleman be remembered by Wolf Pack fans? Keep in mind that Coleman never had as many as 100 assists, 50 steals, 300 points, 150 rebounds or 50 threes in a season. He never had even one double-double, never averaged as much as 10 points in a season and only scored 10 points in a game 34 times in his 148 games.
The basketball junkies in the Wolf Pack crowd, though, will remember Coleman as one of the most unselfish and hardworking players in recent history. Coleman's 4,264 minutes played are second in school history behind Deonte Burton's 4,393 (a record Coleman would have broken easily by the end of this regular season if he didn't get hurt). Coleman also played in 91 Wolf Pack victories, sixth-most in school history (Nick Fazekas participated in a program-record 104 wins).
Coleman's 158 steals are seventh all-time in school history. And remember he was often matched up against the opposing team's best and most skilled offensive player. Coleman averaged 2.4 assists, 1.1 steals, 0.6 blocks and 6.6 points a game in his career. He had two or more steals in a game 40 times, one or more blocks 65 times and five or more rebounds 31 times.
It might have been their Indiana roots that convinced Alford to believe in Coleman from the first moment he stepped on campus. The two, after all, grew up within roughly 150 miles of each other in Indiana (though 40 years apart). But Coleman, it seems, always embodied Alford's toughness, love of the game and willingness to outwork everyone else on the floor every single night. He was, truly, the Wolf Pack's heart and soul, doing things that only coaches and teammates truly appreciate.
Also, keep in mind one thing as the Wolf Pack works its way through the end of this season. If there is a player on this Wolf Pack roster that can indeed play and help his team win with just one healthy hand, it is Coleman.
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How can the Wolf Pack, now 15-11 overall and 7-8 in the Mountain West, survive the end of this season without Coleman and possibly go to the NCAA Tournament for the third consecutive season? Well, the short and quick answer to that question is that it can't. This is a team that has struggled to put up points consistently and will now need to score more often to offset the loss of its best defender.
The 79-71 loss to Colorado State earlier this week showed us that. The Pack likely steals an impressive victory on the road at Fort Collins, Colo., if Coleman is on the floor making life difficult for the Rams' offense. The Wolf Pack allowed just 67.6 points a game in the 23 games this season Coleman played 15 or more minutes. The first time the Pack played Colorado State this year (with Coleman on Dec. 21) the Pack allowed 66 points.
Coleman also helped the Pack offense in subtle ways, making the right pass at the right time, attacking the basket and lofting up a 3-pointer when appropriate. No, we are not telling you Coleman was a combination of Deonte Burton, Nick Fazekas, Edgar Jones, David Padgett, Alex Boyd, Luke Babbitt and Cody and Caleb Martin. But, at different times, for short bursts at a time, he was indeed all of those guys.
The Pack will miss him. His teammates will miss him. Alford will clearly miss him because now all the things he took for granted with Coleman on the floor will, moving forward, require his constant attention.
Pack fans will certainly tell Coleman how much they miss him on Senior Night on March 4 in the final home game against New Mexico.
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The Wolf Pack's slim chance at a top-five finish and a first-round bye in the Mountain West tournament might come to an end this Saturday afternoon (3 p.m. start) when Boise State comes to Lawlor Events Center. The Pack (7-8 in league play) trails New Mexico (14-2 in conference), Utah State (13-3), San Diego State (11-4), Colorado State (11-4), Boise State (10-5) and, yes, even UNLV (8-7) in the race for one of the top five seeds in the all-important conference tournament.
The Pack, like Boise State, San Diego State, Colorado State and UNLV, has five games remaining in the regular season. Utah State and New Mexico have just four each. But don't concern yourself with Utah State and New Mexico. The Pack isn't catching either of those teams. The Pack needs to sweep its final five games and needs at least one team among Boise State, Colorado State and San Diego State to lose all of its games. And, no, don't worry about UNLV, either. The Rebels, who still must play Colorado State, Nevada, San Diego State and New Mexico, could very well lose four of their last five games.
In other words, the Pack needs nothing short of a basketball miracle to get a first-round bye in the conference tournament and is probably looking at needing to win four games in four days to win the tournament. That is important because, well, no team in Mountain West history has ever won four games in four consecutive days to win the tournament.
We also remind you that the Pack will likely have to win the conference tournament to go to the NCAA Tournament, barring a strange set of circumstances that will force the NCAA Tournament selection committee to give an at-large bid to the Pack, a team that has been fairly mediocre (9-10) since Nov. 24.
But there is hope. The Pack did go to the NCAAs two years ago with just 22 wins and a one-game exit from the Mountain West tournament. But that will require this short-handed Pack team to go from mediocre to great over the next two weeks, starting Saturday afternoon.
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Boise State made the Wolf Pack's chances at a top-five finish in the Mountain West even more difficult Wednesday night by beating New Mexico, 86-78, in Boise. A Boise State loss to New Mexico would have put the Broncos on the Pack radar as the team to jump over and into the top five. A Boise loss to New Mexico (which didn't happen) and a Boise loss at Nevada on Saturday (which could still happen) would have left the Broncos at 9-7 in the league and the Pack at 8-8 with four games to play.
But the Broncos beat New Mexico and now the Pack needs them to totally collapse over the next five games and fall to at least sixth place. That's not likely going to happen.
The goal for the Pack now is to simply not worry about what any other team is doing. The Pack simply needs to concentrate on itself, figure out how it is going to play without Coleman and also how to go from mediocre to great in the next 48 hours or so. Forget a top-five seed. If you count on miracles this time of year, well, your season is about to end. The important thing for the Pack right now to find a way to beat a top-five team in the Mountain West, something it has yet to do this year (0-7 against New Mexico, Utah State, Boise State, Colorado State and San Diego State). And that was with their best defender and all-around player.
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Who will replace Coleman as the Pack's best defender on the perimeter?
Good question. Nick Davidson, K.J. Hymes and Brandon Love can't guard anyone outside the paint. Xavier DuSell is certainly experienced enough to play defense, but he always seems to be a bit too preoccupied on shooting threes than to guard anyone seriously on every possession. Tyler Rolison at 6-foot (maybe) is too vertically challenged to be a constant threat on defense. The 6-8 Justin McBride is athletic enough to play defense, but his main value right now is being the only guy off the bench who can actually score (now that Rolison is a starter in Coleman's absence)
The 6-5 Chuck Bailey isn't experienced enough to get substantial minutes. The 6-6 Daniel Foster, even when he doesn't have a sore ankle like he does now, is a solid defender in and around the paint. But put him outside on the wing chasing quicker and more athletic players? Well, there's a reason why he's a 6-6 post player.
Kobe Sanders, at 6-6, can be the new Coleman on defense, if he chooses. He does, after all, average 1.2 steals a game. But the last thing Alford wants is for his point guard and one of his top scorers (second behind Davidson) to either foul out or become exhausted covering the best scorer on the opposing team.
Coleman, we're about to find out, might have been the one player the Pack simply couldn't afford to lose this year.
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The NBA All-Star weekend, to nobody's surprise, was a complete disaster. Commissioner Adam Silver, if he was honest, would also tell you the same thing.
It was embarrassing. A joke. Above all, the NBA game most of us grew up with and loved — one that featured great competition, strategy, effort and meaning — is now completely gone. It has turned into a Super Bowl halftime show. It is unwatchable. It is a slap in the face to all true basketball fans.
Silver should be fired. He is now, without question, one of the worst commissioners in the history of professional sports. Under his watch, the NBA has become a bad sitcom, and he walks around like nothing is wrong because if he did, LeBron James would get mad at him.
The worst thing about it is that the players don't seem to care one bit. They act like they own the sport. They only care, it seems, about their paycheck, fame and the outfits they wear to and from the arena. You don't, after all, have to play hard for those things. They barely give anything close to max effort for more than brief moments in the regular season. A bizarre All-Star game? What are you, a guy yelling at kids on your lawn, watches network TV every night or still has a phone attached to a wall in your house? Aren't you dead yet?
We understand that the only All-Star game that doesn't embarrass itself these days is baseball. So, this is clearly not a problem confined to basketball. The NFL's so-called Pro Bowl has also become a joke. And it's never going to change. The players don't care enough to change it, the commissioners are too afraid to tell the players what to do and the new fans don't know better and only watch highlights on their phone now, anyway.