One mother and one former school supplied Nevada’s best offensive and defensive players. The rest of the No. 6-ranked, unbeaten basketball team’s core came from other parts of the country.
North Carolina State, Southern Illinois, Portland, Omaha and Old Dominion compose the diverse group of schools that produced the six top scorers for the Wolf Pack, who will visit Utah at noon Saturday.
How did the Mountain West's Nevada become a potential Final Four team? The program's emergence began with the move of the Martin twins, Caleb and Cody, from North Carolina State, and the Wolf Pack's growth just kept feeding itself.
“When you look down their roster, there's an awful lot of transfer guys that found their way to Nevada,” said Ute coach Larry Krystkowiak, in an observation that's not as derisive as it may appear.
Nevada coach Eric Musselman “does a good job of blending personalities and talent,” Krystkowiak said.
Nevada (12-0) is the highest-ranked nonconference team to visit the Huntsman Center since an overrated, No. 1 Alabama team in 2002. Before then, Tim Duncan’s No. 2 Wake Forest team came to town in a memorable duel with Keith Van Horn’s Utes in 1996.
The makeup of the Wolf Pack is a major contrast to the way those Utah and Wake Forest clubs of the '90s were built, reflecting the nature of college basketball. Krystkowiak's 2018 NIT finalists were built around transfers. Musselman has taken that approach to an extreme, and successfully so.
Nevada is “a cast of misfits glued together,” the Reno Gazette-Journal observed during the Wolf Pack’s run to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 last March. This year, Nevada might become a No. 1 seed at Vivint Smart Home Arena, hosting first- and second round NCAA games.
The buildup to this point began when Musselman, whose NBA and minor-league coaching history resembles Krystkowiak’s, landed the Martin twins in their move from N.C. State. His shrewd strategy: recruit Cody, the defensive-oriented twin, knowing the more prized Caleb would follow.
“We knew that everybody wanted Caleb — everybody in the country,” Musselman said in March. “And we kind of didn’t worry about Caleb and just went after Cody really hard. We knew they were going to play together no matter where they went, so we recruited Cody more than we recruited Caleb, and Caleb actually liked the fact that we wanted his brother so badly, and I know that his mom felt the same way.”
Jordan Caroline, a forward who's “as good a player as there is in the country,” Krystkowiak said, came from Southern Illinois. This year, Nevada added Jazz Johnson of Portland, Tre'Shawn Thurman of Omaha and Trey Porter as a graduate transfer from Old Dominion.
Ute guard Sedrick Barefield on how playing at Kentucky helps his team prepare for No. 6 Nevada's visit Saturday. pic.twitter.com/6XYpCvSzUQ
— Kurt Kragthorpe (@tribkurt) December 27, 2018
Much like Gonzaga’s staff does, Musselman has tried to maximize the transfers' redshirt seasons. “We call it a player development year,” he said. “It’s all about our staff investing in that player’s career, trying to get him to become a better basketball player, looking at his deficiencies and trying to turn those deficiencies into strengths. … We had a plan that in the [staff’s] Year 4, we wanted to be as good as we possibly could.”
So here’s the Wolf Pack, having already beaten the Pac-12′s Arizona State and USC, looking to complete a perfect nonconference schedule. Trying to upgrade Utah’s schedule, Krystkowiak’s staff had been talking to Nevada last spring about booking a series. Musselman finalized the deal in June, knowing his roster would remain intact, with no players entering the NBA draft. Utah will visit Reno next season.
Krystkowiak and Musselman were NBA coaches during the 2006-07 season, when Krystkowiak was promoted in Milwaukee in March and Musselman was about to be fired in Sacramento. The Bucks and Kings had completed their season series before Krystkowiak took over. So they won’t have met as head coaches until Saturday, when Nevada likely will be the best team that plays in the Huntsman Center all season.
from The Salt Lake Tribune http://bit.ly/2VfVO12
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