Former Nevada coach Sonny Allen led the Wolf Pack to NCAA Tournament appearances in 1984 and 1985.
Nevada Appeal file
Sports Fodder:
The time has come for the Nevada Wolf Pack men's basketball team to finally receive a little Steve Alford postseason magic.
The Wolf Pack has only heard or read about the Alford postseason magic in history books. That magic, unfortunately for Pack loyalists, has yet to actually appear or materialize in Northern Nevada since Alford came to town for the 2019-20 season.
The Wolf Pack, which opens Mountain West tournament play on Wednesday (1:30 p.m.) in Las Vegas against Fresno State, has experienced none of the legendary Alford postseason magic. Alford has been more tragic than magic at Nevada in the postseason, going 2-5 in the conference tournament and 0-2 in the NCAA tournament over the past five seasons. All Pack fans have seen of Alford's postseason magic is him repeatedly failing to guess the correct card and pulling nothing but lint and a dead moth or two out of his hat.
There were the one-and-done performances in the Mountain West tournament in 2020, 2023 and 2024. The failure to show up in the NCAA Tournament the last two years was also a huge letdown.
But we're here to tell you that the Alford magic, which first started to take shape when he won the 1987 national championship at Indiana as a player, actually did happen. It is real.
Alford led the Manchester Spartans to the 1994-95 Division III title game before losing to Wisconsin-Platteville. Four years later, he guided the Southwest Missouri State Bears to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament.
He was just getting started.
Alford led the Iowa Hawkeyes to Big Ten tournament titles in 2001 and 2006 and lost in the championship game in 2002. He then guided the New Mexico Lobos to the Mountain West tournament championship in both 2012 and 2013. Alford then performed some of his greatest postseason magic with the UCLA Bruins, winning the Pac-12 tournament in 2014 and getting to the Sweet 16 three times (2014, 2015, 2017).
That postseason magic is why he's in Nevada in the first place. He was hired, after all, to replace Eric Musselman, perhaps the greatest postseason magician in Nevada history (College Basketball Invitational championship in 2016, Mountain West tournament title in 2017, Sweet 16 in 2018, 6-3 record in Mountain West tournament).
Alford, though, appears to have left his postseason magic at UCLA.
Alford's Pack is almost literally limping into the postseason having lost five of its last six games to finish the regular season 16-15 overall and 8-12 in the Mountain West. The Pack, on Wednesday, will likely beat a horrible Fresno State team, losers of 25-of-31 games (two to the Pack) overall and 18-of-20 in league play. But beating a floundering Fresno State team will not require any magic.
The magic, though, needs to appear on Thursday when the Pack gets a showdown with Colorado State (22-9, 16-4). The legendary Steve Alford postseason magic, which was alive and well at Manchester, Southwest Missouri State, Iowa, New Mexico and UCLA and has been dormant at Nevada, needs to take over the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas from Thursday through Saturday.
It's been obvious that the Pack players can't do it by themselves. This is a Pack team that is good enough to beat the Fresno States of the world but is also just good enough to lose against most everybody else. It is craving some magic right now because nothing short of some magical sleight of hand, tricks up the sleeve and mystical events will get the Pack four wins in four days and a spot in the NCAA tournament.
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The Wolf Pack, pre-Alford, enjoyed some magical postseason runs in the 1940s and 1950s before Musselman wowed them like some 1940s lounge act on Virginia Street.
Sonny Allen's Pack won the Big Sky Conference tournament in both 1984 and 1985 and taught Pack fans to believe in magic. Trent Johnson's Pack won the 2004 Western Athletic Conference tournament and two NCAA Tournament games in 2004. And Musselman arrived a dozen years later to wow us again.
So, yes, postseason magic can survive and even thrive in short bursts in Northern Nevada.
Allen's magic, though, was followed by six kick-in-the-shins postseasons from Len Stevens, who somehow found a way to lose to Weber State three years in a row in his opening Big Sky tournament game. Pat Foster followed Stevens and did get to the Big West tournament title game in 1997 (where he lost at Lawlor Events Center to Pacific). But Foster was just 5-5 in five conference tournaments (despite three of them at Lawlor) and never got to an NCAA Tournament.
Johnson cleaned up Foster's mess and made Pack fans believe in magic once again in 2004 and he was followed by Mark Fox, who won the 2006 WAC tournament and got to the 2009 WAC tournament title game in 2009 (where he lost at Lawlor to Utah State). Fox though, was followed by David Carter, who basically sapped the magic out of the program once again, though he did win two National Invitation Tournament games in 2012 before getting bounced out of the Mountain West tournament in the first round three years in a row.
This little Pack postseason history lesson is a message to Alford that Pack fans know what genuine magic looks like. Pack fans have experienced it firsthand, tasted it and embraced it in true March Madness fashion. There's nothing, after all, like an exciting month of March when Northern Nevada is buzzing about the Wolf Pack.
Alford has produced that buzz in the states of Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, New Mexico and California, everywhere he's been except Nevada. It's time he tests his magic in the state that gave birth to the magical lounge act.
•••
The good news for the Wolf Pack is that the Mountain West this season is ripe for upsets in the conference tournament.
The six teams seeded ahead of the Pack have all had their ups and downs this season. There's no dominating team, no powerhouse that everybody is afraid of, nobody that can't be beaten on a given day. A team like the Pack, which went 1-11 against the top six teams in the conference, might be in the perfect position to be a giant killer.
The Pack has actually gotten a pretty favorable seed at No. 7, so much so that it's almost like Nevada tanked on purpose to get its lucky No. 7 seed.
Stay with us here.
The No. 7 seed has gotten the Pack a favorable matchup with Fresno State on Wednesday. The next day the Pack will get Colorado State, a team that was just 15-9, 9-4 on Feb. 11 before winning its last seven regular-season games. The Pack, though, gave the Rams one of their closest scares over those final seven games, losing 79-71 in Fort Collins, Colo. Thursday's game will not be in Fort Collins.
After beating Colorado State on Thursday, the Pack will then take on either Utah State (most likely), UNLV (slim chance) or Air Force (almost no chance) on Friday in the semifinals. That means that the No. 7 seed can get the Pack to Saturday's title game without having to meet either New Mexico, San Diego State or Boise State, arguably the three teams with the most athletic ability and best head coaches in the conference (not named Alford).
How's that for a little postseason magic? If Alford was honest (and no coach is ever honest), he'd likely tell you this is exactly the conference tournament schedule he'd dream of. All he has to do to win the tournament is get through Fresno State, Colorado State and (likely) Utah State before meeting a New Mexico, San Diego State or Boise State team in the title game that just went through a grueling semifinal game on Friday night? And don't forget, it will be a tired New Mexico, Boise State or San Diego State team on Saturday that will have already sewed up a NCAA Tournament spot before meeting Nevada on Saturday.
Maybe that Alford postseason magic is already working.
•••
Odds are not all Pack fans believe in silver and blue magic right now. Losing five of the last six games and losing all 10 this year against the top five of the league standings can do that to a fan base.
Reality tells us that anything short of a Mountain West tournament title will find the Wolf Pack having to finish out its season either in the NIT (32 teams), College Basketball Invitational (16 teams), CollegeInsider.com tournament (16 teams) or maybe even something called the College Basketball Crown (16 teams).
So, yes, it is almost impossible to not get invited to some postseason tournament these days. All you need is a pulse and an athletic director and fan base that doesn't want to fire the head coach. Yes, it’s a low bar to clear but, hey, the Pack seemingly can clear it with room to spare.
Will Wolf Pack fans get excited about watching their heroes in, say, the NIT or CBI?
Well, they won't be upset. The NIT and CBI would be a nice consolation prize, given what things look like right now. The NIT and CBI, after all, will bring back some pleasant memories. The Pack earned NIT wins in 1979 (Oregon State), 1997 (Fresno State and Jerry Tarkanian), 2010 (Wichita State and Gregg Marshall) and 2012 (Oral Roberts, Bucknell).
The CBI gave Pack fans a glorious 5-1 run to the championship over Montana, Eastern Washington, Vermont and Morehead State in 2016.
We are well aware it's not 2016 anymore. That was Musselman's first season at Nevada and the Pack had not been to the NCAA Tournament since 2007. And even that year it took Pack fans a little time to warm up to the CBI as the first three home games attracted crowds of under 6,200 before 7,431 and 9,043 showed up for the two games at Lawlor in the finals against Morehead State.
Wolf Pack fans were treated to the NCAA Tournament the last two years. Anything short of that will be met with nothing more than some polite excitement. But polite excitement is better than a season that ends in Las Vegas.
•••
If Pack fans are looking for something to smile about right now, look no further than the USC Trojans.
The Trojans and their head coach Eric Musselman (you might have heard of him), had an even worse regular season than the Pack, finishing a game worse than Nevada at 15-16, 7-13 in the Big Ten. Yes, we understand that if the Pack was in the Big Ten a 15-16 record might look pretty darn good and Musselman would have likely won 20-plus games right now in the Mountain West, but college basketball doesn't deal in what-ifs this time of year.
Musselman's Trojans will open the Big Ten tournament on Wednesday against Rutgers in Steve Alford country (Indianapolis) on the same day Alford's Pack takes on Fresno State in Las Vegas in the Mountain West.
So what, you ask? Well, we bring up Musselman's rocky season in his first year at USC only to offer up this enticing possibility. And it's a very real possibility given the location, the current record of each team and the possibility of impressive ticket sales.
What if Musselman and the Trojans meet Alford and the Pack in either the NIT or CBI? What if the game was at Lawlor Events Center? How does a crowd of about 12,000 fans sound? What if the Pack and Alford beats USC and Musselman?
It would be one of the greatest nights in Wolf Pack history and would certainly save this ho-hum season from being completely forgotten. Mark Fox and Trent Johnson never faced the Wolf Pack after they left town. David Carter came back as an assistant and nobody cared, much like when he was head coach at Nevada.
But watching the Muss Bus pull into Lawlor Events Center later this month would be the stuff of silver and blue dreams.
Now that would be real magic.