A few months after he was hired as UNLV’s head coach in 2011, Dave Rice welcomed a rising ninth-grader named Stephen Zimmerman into his office.
It was summertime but this wasn’t those casual handshake-and-tour-the-facilities kind of meetings. Rice offered the boy a scholarship right away.
“He was the most advanced eighth-grader I’ve ever seen,” Rice said.
Soon, this was no secret. Blue bloods such as Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky and UCLA were sniffing along the trail to Las Vegas Bishop Gorman High School, intrigued by a rare 7-footer who bundled elite passing and shooting skills with unselfishness and coachability.
But four years after Rice’s offer, despite all those temptations elsewhere, Zimmerman accepted. He was staying home.
For UNLV, it might have been just in time. The Rebels won only 18 games last season and ended their season in the Mountain West Tournament quarterfinals.
Now in a pivotal fifth season as head coach, Rice knows that doesn’t cut it at UNLV.
He played there for Jerry Tarkanian, after all.
“I think you always feel that pressure,” Rice said. “There’s pressure every year at UNLV, like there is at Arizona or UCLA. You have to look at it that with pressure comes privilege — fans care, boosters care, administrators care and recruits care. But we like our group a lot this year.”
He does because, once again, Rice has recruited well. Not only did he land Zimmerman but also five-star wing Derrick Jones, and the Rebels have two-well regarded four-year transfers in guard Jerome Seagears (Rutgers) and Ben Cook (Oregon) now eligible to play.
Yet all of that promise was questioned Wednesday, when ASU wiped out a 12-point halftime deficit to beat UNLV 66-56.
In Las Vegas. And without ASU’s leading scorer and rebounder, Savon Goodman, who didn’t make the trip for unspecified reasons.
“Overall, it’s been good,” Rice said Friday. “We’re definitely making progress and we were pleased at halftime against Arizona State. It just happened that we couldn’t make a basket, and our defense followed.”
The loss is one of those that could haunt the Rebels in the NCAA selection committee room next March. UNLV is 6-3 against Division I competition, and already have a Sagarin power rating of 76 and an RPI of 87, shaky ground to be on as they approach Mountain West Conference play.
But it’s also a loss that could be largely made up for with a win over the Wildcats tonight.
The way Miller explained it Wednesday after the Wildcats clobbered NAU, that’s entirely possible. Especially considering the fact that the UNLV-Arizona series continues to generate suspense, even decades after the bitterness of the Tark-vs.-Lute days subsided.
UNLV won at McKale Center during Miller’s first year of 2009-10, lost at McKale by only five during UA’s Elite Eight 2013-14 season — and snapped Arizona’s 39-game nonconference winning streak by beating them last season in Las Vegas.
Then there’s what UNLV has done this season, at least before that ASU game. The Rebels lost to UCLA by only two points and edged Indiana at the Maui Invitational, then beat Oregon in Las Vegas.
“UNLV is one of the most talented teams we’ll play all season,” Miller said. “They have some great talent, some guys who can shoot and defend, and it looks like they’re playing good defense.”
One of those great talents, of course, Miller knows all too well. Miller not only recruited Zimmerman heavily for years but also was an assistant coach on the 2014 USA Basketball U18 team that won the FIBA Americas gold medal with Zimmerman on it (Zimmerman did not play for the successor U19 team last summer).
Zimmerman’s stepmom, Lori Stevens, even tweeted out a picture that summer of a grinning, gold-medal-wearing Zimmerman with his arms around Miller outside the USA Basketball facilities in Colorado Springs. (“Relax,” she wrote, presumably to fans of rival programs. “It’s just a pic with his USA coach!”)
Zimmerman has continued to progress at UNLV, averaging 9.9 points and 8.0 rebounds just 10 games into his college career.
“Stephen Zimmerman is a fantastic player,” Miller said. “Just watching him, it looks like he’s a junior a junior or a senior in college. He’s smart, he’s patient. A lot of what Mark Tollefsen brings in terms of playing really well in the framework of a team, he brings those qualities to UNLV.
“He’s got a great defensive presence and he’s going to have a bright, bright future.”
It’s just that Zimmerman’s future won’t be reached through McKale Center. He’ll just stopover there on Saturday night.
