UNLV Basketball Looks To Improve On Last Season’s 18-15 Season
By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — There’s always a pleasant, loosey-goosey vibe at the Mountain West Conference media day, where coaches and players from the league’s schools chat with the media.
The revamped and newly-aligned conference that includes the UNLV Rebels brought together ten basketball programs on a floor at The Palms Hotel, just west of the Strip.
Loosey-goosey is one way to describe UNLV’s effervescent, chatty coach, Josh Pastner. The former Memphis and Georgia Tech hoops coach enjoys telling people that if you have your health, you are a billionaire.
“Nothing else matters,” Pastner told LVSportsBiz.com before he sat at a table and gabbed with media in his upbeat engaging style.
Well, there’s a few other things that matter to him. Pastner would like a few more wins than last season, when UNLV won 18 games and lost 15 and, as usual, failed to qualify for the NCAA’s Big Dance.
Back in the day, UNLV was a national college basketball power. But it’s been a while since the Runnin’ Rebels have even qualified for the NCAA national basketball tournament. It was 2013 when UNLV was a number five seed and lost to 12-seeded California in the East Region.
This year, Pastner will be relying on sophomore Tyrin Jones and fifth-year guard AJ Storr, who were both selected to the 2026-27 Preseason All-Mountain West Team. Plus, Pastner will have a talented freshman, Jackson Kiss, a 6-foot-8-inch forward from Auckland, New Zealand, in his first season with the Runnin’ Rebels after playing at Utah Prep Academy.
Pastner said his roster is focused on having more guards this season and his team will “have to be a touh, hard-nosed group.”
These are new times for the Mountain West, which saw Boise State, Fresno State, Colorado State, Utah State and San Diego State leave the league for the Pac-12 and will see new basketball schools like Grand Canyon, UC Davis and UTEP play in the ten-team conference that still has UNLV, New Mexico, Air Force, Wyoming, San Jose State and Nevada.
The Mountain West this year unveiled a new slogan: “Built Bold,” which replaced the previous, “At the Peak” conference brand saying.
Yes, things have changed. At Wyoming, one of its most high-visible fans, “The Barrel Man,” no longer is around and a student known as the UW Spiderman is an entertaining unofficial mascot at home games in Laramie. Who knows, maybe the UW Spiderman will be attending the MWC hoops tournament held annually at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center. The Mountain West covers or removes UNLV branding and even brings in a separate playing court surface to try to make UNLV’s building neutral site for the men’s and women’s basketball tournament in March.
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