Joe Santoro: Steve Alford is Nevada Wolf Pack's 'top weapon'

Steve Alford is doing it with mirrors, some sleight of hand, a little Hollywood CGI special effects and a whole lot of glue, tape and string this season for the Nevada Wolf Pack men’s basketball team. And, oh yeah, if you look closely on the Wolf Pack bench, you’ll notice that all of Alford’s fingers are crossed and he has a four-leaf clover tucked behind his ear. Alford has his Pack at 8-5 heading into a two-game series Friday and Sunday at Lawlor Events Center against Fresno State. That 8-5 record (3-3 in the Mountain West) is not a reason to erect a statue outside of Lawlor. But it’s a solid achievement so far in this pandemic season for a team with two legitimate starters and a whole lot of question marks.

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This Wolf Pack team just might be the least experienced and thinnest at Nevada since the first two seasons (1999-2001) of the Trent Johnson era. And the bulk of the talent right now is just conjecture. Grant Sherfield and Desmond Cambridge are very productive and talented and could have carved out a role on a lot of Pack teams in the last two decades. But Sherfield and Cambridge, along with Alford’s magic, are the only reasons why this team has more than a couple wins right now. The roster beyond Sherfield and Cambridge, while it has unrefined talent and potential, is young, unproven, unsure of itself, inconsistent and unreliable from game to game. Alford is conducting a Basketball 101 class this season at Nevada and he has to do it on Zoom and inside empty gyms with no energy and atmosphere.

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It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Pack team with less experience and fewer proven commodities. Last year’s Pack had Jalen Harris, Jazz Johnson, Nisre Zouzoua and Lindsey Drew. The Eric Musselman teams from 2015-19 were as talented as any in school history. Coach David Carter’s Pack from 2009-15 also had a ton of talent every year. Carter had Luke Babbitt, Armon Johnson, Deonte Burton, Malik Story, Brandon Fields, Joey Shaw, Dario Hunt, Malik Cooke, Cole Huff, A.J. West, Marqueze Coleman, Jerry Evans, Olek Czyz and others that also would have been given big minutes on this year’s team. We don’t have to list all of the wonderful talent on Mark Fox’s teams from 2004-09. And Johnson’s teams, starting in 2001-02 through 2004-04, had Kirk Snyder, Kevinn Pinkney, Gary Hill-Thomas, Corey Jackson, Sean Paul, Terrance Green, Todd Okeson and others that also would have started on this year’s team.

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The Wolf Pack’s top weapon this year, though, is Alford. So, yes, while this Pack team is short on experience and depth compared to others in school history since 2001, it will win a whole lot more games than a lot of those teams because of Alford. There’s a reason why he is getting seven figures a year. And, no, it’s not because he knows Bobby Knight. Alford will squeeze as many victories out of this team as possible. He has done that since he came to Nevada before the start of last year. Johnson, Fox and Musselman, for the most part, also did it. Carter, for the most part, did not, despite the fact that he was a solid recruiter.

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Jalen Harris bolting for the NBA draft a year early after last season drained this Pack team of its explosiveness. He carried last year’s team on his back to 19 victories, at times seemingly taking every important shot. Sherfield and Cambridge are solid players that will put up impressive numbers just because they rarely leave the floor. Sherfield, especially, is a special player. If the NCAA did not allow him to play immediately this season instead of sitting out a year after transferring from Wichita State, the Pack might be 3-10 right now. But Sherfield and Cambridge are not Harris. They are also not Cody and Caleb Martin, Jordan Caroline, Deonte Burton, Luke Babbitt, Armon Johnson, Nick Fazekas, Kevinn Pinkney, Cam Oliver, Marcelus Kemp and Kirk Snyder. Right now, on their good nights, they can be Malik Story, Dario Hunt, Cole Huff, Jerry Evans, Todd Okeson, Lindsey Drew and Jazz Johnson. But Story, Hunt, Huff, Evans, Drew, Okeson and Johnson had a lot of help on the teams they played for. Sherfield and Cambridge, most nights, are trying to win games by themselves. They have to play well each night or the Pack risks getting blown out of the empty gym.

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This week’s Alabama-Ohio State college football title game, to nobody’s surprise, tanked in the television ratings. It was the least watched championship game since the glorified exhibition sport came up with its sham system in 1998 to determine a champion. The pandemic, of course, is a big reason why the ratings dropped 27 percent from last year. But it can’t be the only reason. The pandemic, after all, is also the reason why watching TV is the only thing to do right now that isn’t totally aggravating or frustrating. Watching pandemic sports, though, has become tiresome. The games without fans in the stands border on lifeless and boring, no matter how much fake crowd noise the TV networks pump in. But maybe college football fans are finally waking up and realizing they are being used by the networks and the NCAA with this silly playoff system that rewards the fat and rich.

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Boise State followed its tried and true formula this week and hired someone with ties to the university to take over its football program. The last four Broncos head coaches (Dan Hawkins, Chris Peterson, Bryan Harsin and, now, Andy Avalos) all were either former or current Broncos assistant coaches when hired. Avalos was a standout linebacker at Boise State from 2002-04 and coached under Peterson. The last two years he was Oregon’s defensive coordinator. He is the second former Oregon coordinator to be hired as a head coach by a Mountain West school in the last two years. UNLV grabbed Oregon offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo after the 2019 season and Arroyo went 0-6 in 2020. It’s just a guess but Avalos likely won’t lose his first six games in 2021, especially if he plays UNLV.

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The Wolf Pack went from 1959 through 1999 by hiring either former Pack players or current assistants to coach its football team, starting with Dick Trachok and continuing through Jerry Scattini, Chris Ault, Jeff Horton and Jeff Tisdel. Chris Tormey, who was hired in 2000, was the first Pack head football coach without any ties to the school since Gordon McEachron (1955-58). The last two Pack head coaches (Brian Polian and Jay Norvell) also had no ties to Nevada when they were hired. And it likely wasn’t a coincidence that Polian and Norvell were also hired by athletic directors with no ties to the university (Cary Groth, Doug Knuth). The Pack ADs from 1959 through 1999, after all, were Nevada legends Jake Lawlor, Trachok and Ault and they just went down the hall or looked in the mirror to hire their football coaches.

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NFL playoff predictions: Green Bay over Los Angeles, Buffalo over Baltimore, New Orleans over Tampa Bay and Kansas City over Cleveland. New Orleans has already beaten Tampa twice this year. The Rams have a great defense but their offense has vanished. Cleveland also beaten up on a lot of bad teams. It’s hard to beat Patrick Mahomes in Kansas City. Baltimore-Buffalo is a toss-up but if Buffalo forces Lamar Jackson to throw the ball the Ravens will be in trouble.