When Dave Rice became UNLV’s basketball coach in 2011, he looked at how predecessor Lon Kruger built the program with players who would stay for three or four years and passed on those who wanted to play a year and sprint to the NBA.
Kruger was successful with that approach, but Rice had been on the UNLV team that won the 1990 national championship, and he wanted to bring in elite players to take the next step and help him return the Rebels to those glory days.
“The thing that concerned me was UNLV hadn’t had a first-round draft pick since 2003,” Rice said.