NCAA Basketball Report News

Coaches say the darnedest things.

In an era when paying players and other previously forbidden stratagems are openly countenanced in college basketball, well-traveled Cuonzo Martin, with tongue presumably planted firmly in cheek, suggested a strategy this past summer to “create an atmosphere” at Missouri State. To boost the school’s negligible student attendance at Springfield’s Great Southern Bank Arena, the coach proposed offering free course credits for those who came to at least 85 percent of the Bears’ home games.

The approach would be rather more forthright than the phantom classes for athletes at North Carolina that came to light more than a decade ago, but don’t be surprised if some school, similarly proclaiming its academic freedom, heeds Martin’s call.

Another foolishly phrased, if not entirely outlandish proposal, was floated during the offseason by UNLV’s coach. As Yahoo! sports put it in a July headline, “Josh Pastner Doing Josh Pastner Things.”

Pastner’s proposal is not as outlandish as it sounds. Oklahoma State for years depended on the overt largesse of the late billionaire T. Boone Pickens. St. John’s recently jumped back into the national basketball picture thanks to the NIL funding of an unabashedly generous booster, his support featured as emblematic of the current collegiate scene on the front page of the New York Times. Other leagues and schools made deals with private equity firms to better capitalize their athletic enterprises.

So it wasn’t much of a reach when Pastner proposed in a Las Vegas TV interview that Runnin’ Rebels men’s basketball needed an “owner” and threw out a figure of $10 million to $15 million. “I have told people, why buy the NBA team?” he said. “You can be the owner of the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels men’s basketball team. And it’s a lot less expensive.”

Shortly afterward, the second-year Mountain West coach clarified that he was only kidding.

The glib remark furthered a popular perception that Pastner is, well, a bit different. What he also is, although not widely noted, is a pretty good coach, highlighted by his selection as the 2017 ACC Coach Of The Year. Pastner got twice as many votes that season as Roy Williams, whose Tar Heels won the ’17 national championship.

In 2021 Pastner took Georgia Tech to its only NCAA berth in a 16-season span. Twice his teams finished in the top third of the conference. During his seven-year Tech tenure (2017-23) his teams were among the ACC’s best at clamping down on opponents’ 3-point attacks. 

Matching far more acclaimed defensive mastermind Tony Bennett of Virginia, during the same decade three of Pastner’s squads posted the league’s top 3-point defense, a trait for which his coaching was scarcely credited.

Last season it was Mike Young’s Virginia Tech squad that led the league in stifling opponents’ 3-point shooting. Defense is not the first thing you think of when contemplating Young’s Hokies, however. Their sound perimeter prowling could be extremely significant if carried forward alongside improved team field goal shooting — .448, 16^th in the ACC in  2026. 

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