Can UNLV Play “Moneyball” Without the Money?

And not just because of the hard-to-put-down best-selling book, or the Oscar-nominated movie. But by necessity. Pastner, entering his second year as coach at UNLV, feels a certain kinship with Beane and his mindset, especially after hearing the former Oakland A’s general manager speak at the UNLV Foundation’s Annual Dinner at the Bellagio Hotel & Casino’s Grand Ballroom in March, two days before Pastner’s Runnin’ Rebels won a Mountain West Conference Tournament game.

That was two months before Pastner had to make like Beane and rebuild his roster after an up-and-down season that included eye-opening wins against the likes of Memphis, Stanford and Utah State, head-scratching losses to Tennessee-Martin, Montana and Tennessee State, a postseason NIT win at UC Irvine and an 18-17 overall record.

Not a bad debut, all things considered (Pastner essentially built his inaugural Rebels team on the fly, what with his being hired after the transfer portal opened and then losing his starting point guard to a season-ending foot injury before the season began and his starting center to a season-ending foot injury five games into the season). These days Pastner is again playing salesman, in more ways than one. With college athletics fully immersed in the NIL era and UNLV’s mid-major NIL budget comparatively paltry — UNLV athletic director Erick Harper told the Las Vegas Review-Journal the school expects to have an NIL and revenue-sharing budget of $10.75 million for the entire department this coming academic year, up from last year’s $7.5 million — Pastner had to be pragmatic in who he could afford to bring back. “It’s the only way to make it work under our budget,” he said.

Gone is high-scoring guard Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn, who parlayed his lone season at UNLV into a league-leading 20.7 average and, thus, a bag from Texas Tech for his senior season. Returning are a pair of rising sophomores — electric forward Tyrin Jones (11.9 ppg on 59.4 percent shooting, 5.0 rebounds per game, a league-leading 2.2 blocks per game) and streaky shooting guard Issac Williamson (8.6 ppg, 43 three-pointers on 33.3 percent shooting from the arc) – and a redshirt junior guard in Jalen Cunningham (2.7 minutes average in 7 games as a walk-on).

The portal beckoned and Pastner went to work, looking for those “under-the-radar, undervalued, under-represented” players. He landed guards Terrance Ford, Jr. (Tulsa), Sebastian Mack (Missouri), Cam Miles (Florida State) and Dontrez Williams (Lindenwood), forwards Tyler Harris (Vanderbilt) and MJ Thomas (New Orleans) and center Jeremy Foumena (South Florida). He also inked a pair of incoming freshmen in guard Kota Suttle and forward Jackson Kiss while guard Alyn Breed (North Carolina State) is awaiting a decision from the NCAA on a medical hardship waiver that would give him a seventh college campaign.

“It’s been a very busy offseason,” Pastner said. “You can have a wish list but everything is in a budget. That’s why we’re looking for those under-the-radar, undervalued guys. Last year, we wanted to establish a culture, a style of play and an identity. I thought we did a good job in those three areas. We had some nice moments and some tough losses. We had a good year but there’s no denying we need to take a step forward.”

As the Rebels have been engaging in 6 a.m. strength and conditioning workouts and mini-golf team-bonding outings this summer, a new Mountain West Conference awaits.

Because while five schools bolted for the rebuilt Pac-12, the Mountain West added UTEP, UC Davis and Hawaii to join UNLV, New Mexico, Grand Canyon, Air Force, San Jose State, Wyoming and UNR in basketball.

“The league we’re going to have is going to be really good,” Pastner said. “The Mountain West and the Pac-12 will be fighting for multiple bids, especially with eight teams added to the NCAA tournament.”

UNLV, which has not had a conference player of the year since Kebu Stewart in 1994, has not played in the NCAA’s since 2013. And the Rebels have not won a game there since 2008. When UNLV had it going with three Final Four appearances in five years, Jerry Tarkanian’s Rebels were the only sports show in town, save for the occasional boxing superfight and the triple-A baseball team.

Now?

The Rebels, who averaged standing-room-only crowds of 18,658 at the 18,500-seat Thomas & Mack Center in 1990-91 and had an average home attendance of 5,374 last season, have to compete for the hearts, minds and wallets of an ever-evolving Southern Nevada sports scene. When Tarkanian coached here, Vegas was a pro sports desert. Now, the NHL, NFL, WNBA all have teams here, Major League Baseball will be there next spring, and the NBA could be on its way. “I think it’s great,” said UNLV Hall of Famer Stacey Augmon, who served as Pastner’s Director of Community Engagement last season. “I think it’s great for the city of Las Vegas. The only thing I want is [for the NBA team] to be called the Las Vegas Rebels, man. The Las Vegas Rebels, baby.”

Augmon joined two of his former teammates, Greg Anthony and Larry Johnson, in Vegas a reunion of the 1990 national championship team, and to promote an under-development documentary on that transcendent team entitled “Kings of Vegas.” The film chronicles the Rebels’ record-breaking run to the title and describes how they set the stage for how Las Vegas has gone from reviled to revered.

“The UNLV Runnin’ Rebels that Tark produced and brought to the forefront, is the birth of Las Vegas sports,” rapper Calvin ‘Snoop Dogg’ Broadus said in the documentary. “Without the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels, you don’t have the Las Vegas Aces. You don’t have the Las Vegas [Golden] Knights. You don’t have the Las Vegas Raiders. You don’t have none of that.” 

This is the changed environment that Pastner has stepped into, a figurative copy of “Moneyball” in one hand, a blueprint to rebuild the Rebels year after year in the other, with a relatively miniscule NIL budget floating overhead. Besides free parking for fans (a huge Pastner talking point, as well as giving out his email – joshua.pastner@unlv.edu – to fans), the UNLV coach has another idea when it comes to the NBA eventually taking up residence in Las Vegas. Win, Pastner said, and fans will show up. Fans show up to create an intimidating atmosphere, and that will help the team win. 

“I look at it all as a positive,” Pastner said. “But we’ve got to be unique. Does winning help? Absolutely. It’s all tied to the entertainment value through the game. Wins and losses, they all go hand in hand. We want to try to remind people of the 80s and the 90s; Jerry Tarkanian won 83 percent of his games. That cannot be duplicated. Eras are all different. Yes, we want to get it back rocking, like back in the day, but it’s also a chicken-and-egg thing.”

Pastner, who has also been head coach at Memphis and Georgia Tech, said it will cost more than a billion dollars to get an NBA expansion team in Las Vegas. “Here’s the deal,” Pastner said, “you can have the same excitement of owning a team and all you’ve got to spend is $10 million, and you’ll still get the tax write-off. Come own our team. Our value continues to rise.”

Now that’s a different kind of “Moneyball.”