Bad year for Pack basketball

For the first time that I can remember, the Nevada men’s basketball team will be in the play-in game at a conference tournament.The Wolf Pack finished last, and will face Wyoming in Tuesday’s play-in game at the Thomas & Mack Center on the UNLV campus. The Wolf Pack women also will be in the play-in game. Not a good year for hoops at Nevada to say the least.If, and right now that’s a big if, the Nevada men get by Wyoming they would have to play regular-season champion New Mexico in the next round. The Lobos posted two double-digit wins over the Pack during the regular season.I don’t expect Nevada to get by Wyoming on Tuesday, ending what has been an absolute brutal season.The Pack needs some big-time help at power forward and center.“Their fives are really fours and their fours are really threes,” a long-time Pack supporter recently told me. “They are soft in the middle. They can’t rebound.”Let’s face it, the last two recruiting classes of former coach Mark Fox weren’t the best, and good big men are hard to find. This team was recruited to play in the WAC and not the Mountain West Conference. There is a big difference between the caliber of the two leagues. As bad as Nevada is this year, I think they would be a middle-of-the-pack team in the WAC.Unfortunately, coach David Carter just can’t clean house like you can do in pro sports. College teams get in trouble if they start yanking scholarships for whatever reason. Teams are graded by the NCAA in terms of retention and graduation of players.I hope the new athletic director, whomever that may be, doesn’t come in and get rid of Carter.•••If you like college basketball, you should head to Las Vegas next week. Sin City will host three, that’s right, three conference tournaments.The Orleans, which hosted the West Coast Conference tournament this week, will play host to the WAC starting on Tuesday. The MWC Championship starts on Tuesday at UNLV, and for the first time, the Pac-12 championship will be played in Vegas at the MGM Arena. •••Earlier this week, Tim Dahlberg of the Associated Press wrote about the World Baseball Classic, and he suggested that it be scrapped for numerous reasons.Personally, I’d rather see these games played in November after the World Series is over. Maybe then American and National League teams wouldn’t fret over whether their players were involved or not.Also, if the WBC is going to continue, the games need to be broadcast on a station most people get. The MLB network requires much more than a basic package on pretty much all cable providers. Why not put it on ESPN? All basic packages usually have at least ESPN. I’m on DISH, and I get both ESPN and ESPN2. What’s wrong with a network picking up some of the telecasts?•••No offense to Reed’s Lynn Mentzer, who is the track guru of Northern Nevada, but my biggest complaint about the spring season is the inability of area schools, including Carson High, to get track scores, times and distances reported in a timely matter. Much too often, I don’t see anything until the next day. It’s not acceptable.Initial blame goes to the school that hosts the meet for not doing their part, but other teams at the meet could also report their own scores. In the long run when this happens, it’s the student-athletes who get cheated because they don’t get the proper recognition.I’d like to see schools pay people to not only officiate the meet, but be the person responsible for scoring the meet.If coaches could do this job back in my day by entering all the marks by hand, why does it take so long in the computer age?•••Apparently the regional track meet will be at Damonte Ranch this year. In 2014, Carson High will host both the regional and state meet.I think once people from around the state see the Carson layout, they will vote to have Carson host the event on a regular basis.