After making the NCAA tournament in his first two seasons at UNLV, former head coach Dave Rice failed to make it there in his third, and his fourth season looked to be headed for that same fate, so he was fired. UNLV is always a school with extremely high expectations since they always have a ton of talent, but they have failed to meet those expectations the past two years despite having some highly regarded players.
Todd Simon took over for Rice on an interim basis, but his chances of keeping the job were always slim. Given the fact that things didn't get much better under Simon, it is not a surprise that UNLV is looking at external options to coach the team moving forward.
The guy that UNLV seemed to key on was Cincinnati head coach Mick Cronin, who was in Las Vegas to visit with the school earlier this week. Cronin is young, but experienced, and has had a lot of success as the head coach at Cincinnati, so he would have been a solid choice. After meeting with Cronin, athletic director Tina Kunzer-Murphy believed that they had reached an agreement for him to become the next head coach.
Kunzer-Murphy even went as far as to say that she was going to plan a press conference to announce the 44-year-old coach, but then Cronin decided to stay at Cincinnati. Cincinnati is Cronin's alma mater, and he has had a lot of success there in 10 years, including going to six straight NCAA tournaments. He says that he never agreed to become the next head coach at UNLV, but it will be interesting to see how things are moving forward at Cincy because it looked like he was close to moving on. Cincinnati president Santa J. Ono said on Twitter that he was thrilled that Cronin will remain the schools head coach, but these kinds of things can lead to animosity between the coach and the fan base.
As for UNLV's still vacant head coaching position, New Mexico State coach Mark Menzies has emerged as the new favorite for the position. Kunzer-Murphy has said that she wants to hire a coach by the Final Four, and even after being spurned by Cronin, she has stuck to that. With that in mind, Menzies may be the guy considering he was flown to Las Vegas and is interviewing on Saturday. Other names mentioned have been former St. Johns coach Steve Lavin, South Carolina coach Frank Martin and Sain Mary's coach Randy Bennett. Former Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Mike Brown was a name that was talked about immediately after Rice was fired, but there hasn't been much of any talk about him recently.
