Some interesting things about Nevada & news that we almost hired WMU's coach!!

Nevada is the other team we may face in the Chicago Invitational...and it's hard to know what to make of Nevada.
They have gotten more big time D-I transfers and top recruits than most mid-majors and yet -- last year they were pretty terrible.
They ended 13-19, 8-8 in the WAC and they were even worse against non-conference opponents, losing every non-conference game away from home.
At one point last year they were 4-13 then they won a few against the bottom dwellers of their conference - Louisiana Tech, San Jose State, Fresno State, and Hawaii.
Their RPI of 194 and SOS of 111 were on par with BU's and yet BU had injuries to account for their performance and still it got the coach fired.

So why did Nevada after having a 21-game season and knocked off Wichita State in the post-season in 2009-2010, and nine consecutive post-season appearances - that they fell so hard and far and ended up way under .500 in 2010-2011?

They have kids who started their careers at Indiana (Malik Story 14.5 ppg) and Duke (Olek Czyz 12.3 ppg)... and other highly touted players...
But despite the good players, they just never gelled - -and many thought they had team chemistry issues.
Almost all their scoring and productivity returns but will the be better?
Time will tell......but they really did lose - even at home - to some pretty weak teams last year.

Here's their stat page - all of their top 7 players return...
http://www.nevadawolfpack.com/sports/m-baskbl/stats/2010-2011/teamcume.html

Their top assistant Doug Novsek is a SIU grad and 4 year player for the Salukis.

Here's their message board -- it's a fairly active one.
http://www.wolfpackchat.com/

But here's something interesting I found on their message board...
They don't have much discussion going yet about Bradley - maybe since they think football they don't care yet about basketball..

But they do talk about this recent article on Steve Hawkins - head coach at Western Michigan.
http://www.mlive.com/broncos/index.ssf/2011/08/wmu_basketball_coach_steve_haw.html

It seems a year ago when they were hiring a new head coach - Hawkins was one of the top candidates. BUT this article reveals something that maybe most did not know...
Not only did Hawkins turn down Nevada...but it says that Hawkins also got
"HEAVY INTEREST" from Bradley when Bradley was hiring!!

"Hawkins has turned down a number of suitors in recent years.

Those included several chances to return to California — San Francisco, Loyola-Marymount, Pepperdine — as well as head coaching offers from Nevada and SMU and, just this past offseason, heavy interest from Bradley and Loyola-Chicago.

Hawkins might have doubled his salary with a couple of the aforementioned offers. Bradley, for example, will pay former Kent State coach Geno Ford $700,000 per year."

OK -- how many people knew that?? Somewhere between getting snubbed by Rob Jeter, Mark Montgomery, Dan Monson, Ray Giacoletti and others, it appears we went "HEAVY" after Steve Hawkins and he turned down Bradley also! Hmmm.......
At least we ended up with the best MAC coach -- I can't imagine what we'd have heard from fans had we hired a middle of the pack MAC coach who has been above .500 in the Mid-American Conference only once in the past three years!