Mindy and Dave Rice watch as their son, Travis Rice, second from right, coaches the Bishop Gorman High School junior varsity boys’ basketball team Friday, Feb. 5, 2023, against Durango High School. The elder Rice, seven years removed from coaching at his alma mater, UNLV, says he’s ready for his next opportunity.
Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Dave Rice is sitting in the living room of his Henderson home watching college basketball this weeknight.
He flips between a few games on the television mounted to the wall, stopping on a Mountain West tilt between Boise State and New Mexico. Boise State executes a play and Rice grabs the notebook he keeps on a nearby table to write his observations.
Rice, the former UNLV head coach and national champion player, has been on a two-year sabbatical from coaching. Yet, he’s never stopped in what’s been a lifelong mission to be a student of the game.
He’s meticulously taking notes in preparation for the next opportunity, whether that’s as a head coach, assistant coach — like the spot he had at the University of Washington for three seasons through 2020 — or wherever the basketball Gods call him.
“He watches every single day. It doesn’t matter who it is,” said his oldest son Travis Rice, who is often on the nearby sofa. “He can’t stay away because this has been his life for so long. One thing I love to do is to sit there and watch a game with him and see how his mind works. When something happens, he’s going to write it down.”
For a guy with no team to coach, Dave Rice sure spends a lot of time in the gym.
He frequently attends walk -through practices for programs in town for a game, observing how the workouts are organized and staying on top of the newest trends. He’s also a regular in the stands at Bishop Gorman High School, where brother Grant Rice’s program is always a state contender and where Travis is running the junior varsity team.
He’s also in contact with coaching colleagues or former players. Sometimes, it’s a text message after a game to a former UNLV player in the NBA, like the Spurs’ Khem Birch or the Bulls’ Derrick Jones Jr. Other times, it’s phone calls with college coaches ahead of a big game to offer encouragement.
Between waking up at the crack of dawn to exercise and countless hours of watching games, it’s like Rice hasn’t stopped coaching — of course, minus the players.
“I just realized I had done this for 27 years,” Rice, 54, said of the break. “I’ve been a head coach or an assistant coach for 27 straight seasons, and I had some opportunities (to keep going), but I wanted to take a break. The way I characterize it is I want to organize my experience and look back and figure out the things that I did well, or the things I can do better.”
Rice was on UNLV’s back-to-back Final Four teams in the early 1990s. A few months after the Rebels lost to Duke in the national semifinals in 1991, he was offered a spot on Jerry Tarkanian’s staff.
In 2011, he returned as head coach to highlight a lengthy career that also included runs as an assistant at Utah State, BYU, UNR and Washington.
Following the 2020 season with Washington, Rice decided to recalibrate and take a break. He came home to Southern Nevada, where he’s often reminded of his love for UNLV when running into supporters at dinner or when making a quick stop at the neighborhood grocery store.
Those encounters, Rice said, have helped him recover from the disappointment of being fired in 2016 from his dream job coaching his alma mater.
“When I really got better was when I realized that it was not healthy to be the victim,” he said. “While I don’t agree with the decision, I understand that was their prerogative to make that decision. That is when I experienced tremendous growth. I understand that even though I’m proud of what we accomplished, I could have coached better, I could have recruited better, I could have managed better.”
More importantly, Rice said he was taking those lessons to be a better coach for the next job.
The toughest part of the past two years is not being around a team. His misses interacting with players and helping them develop — that, after all, is why he got into coaching.
“I miss all the energy and experience of game day, the nervousness, excitement and all those all those feelings,” he said. “There’s nothing like game day.”
‘My No. 1 mentor’
Rice and his wife, Mindy, are about seven rows up on the gym’s bleachers for the junior varsity game at Bishop Gorman.
Dave Rice appears to be his typical calm and cool self. But inside, “I’m a nervous dad,” he said.
Travis Rice, 25, is getting his start into the coaching industry and led the Gorman lower-level team to a 21-4 record this winter. Dad was available to give advice or watch film — but only when asked, and always positive, his son said.
“He’s my No. 1 mentor, not just in coaching but also in life,” Travis Rice said. “I will ask him, ‘Give me the good and the bad.’ He always tells me some stuff you have to learn with the experience and feel of the game.”
Travis Rice has loved college basketball since childhood, remembering needing to be held by his mother as the pregame fireworks blasted at the Thomas & Mack Center during his father’s time as a UNLV assistant. Later as a teenager when his dad was the head coach, the pageantry of the fireworks and packed arena helped intensify his passion for the game.
Travis Rice also wants to make a living as a coach — just like dad, his grandfather (a legendary prep coach in California), and uncle at Gorman.
“I always had it in the back of my mind that coaching is something I would be interested in,” he said. “Being the son of a college coach, I loved the game, and I loved being around it. I like to think I know the game at a very high level.”
Travis Rice’s basketball journey included stints playing at Northern Arizona University, a junior college and at the University of Washington. Being part of the program with his dad at Washington was a thrill of a lifetime.
Dave Rice’s coaching break has given the family plenty of time together, and those nights of junior varsity basketball — while not as attractive as a college game on national television — were certainly meaningful. If anything, it reaffirmed Travis Rice’s desires to follow his father’s career.
“I lean toward my dad,” he said of his coaching style. “My dad, being a calm presence on the sideline and not someone who jumps around and goes crazy, that’s the right way to do it. As a player, I liked when my coach was calm, even in the most stressful situations.”
UNLV coach Dave Rice calls a play against Fresno State during the Mountain West opener at the Thomas & Mack Center on Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015.
Relationship with UNLV ‘complicated'
Anderson Hunt, the program’s all-time leading 3-point shooter, glanced around the room at the Thomas & Mack Center ahead of his induction into the UNLV Athletics Hall of Fame last spring and realized his Rebel teammates were noticeably missing.
Then, Rice arrived — the only player from the UNLV dynasty to make his way back to campus for the celebration. “D-Rice, I love you,” Hunt shouted as the men embraced.
The moment went viral on social media, with many supporters wondering why Rice would return after the way UNLV treated him. A legacy player with ties to the program’s finest moments should have been allowed to finish his final season, supporters argued.
Instead, Rice — despite a 98-54 record and average home attendance of 13,422 — was shown the door a few games into Mountain West play in 2016.
“It’s complicated,” he said of his relationship with the university. “I will forever be appreciative of the opportunity coach Tarkanian gave me to come to UNLV as a scholarship player and be part of two Final Four teams. And I will forever be appreciative of what coach Tarkanian and coach (Tim) Grgurich gave me to get into the coaching profession.
“Mindy and I both graduated from UNLV. So, you know, it’s been so important in our lives. And so, I choose to remember the good times, and as time goes on, time heals a lot of the things that were difficult that we went through.”
Between two Final Four seasons, 10 campaigns as an assistant coach and five as the head coach, most of Rice’s basketball life has been at UNLV. All of those memories certainly outweigh the way his tenure ended, he stresses.
“He cares so much about UNLV,” Travis Rice said. “Even after everything that happened, he still supports UNLV to this day, which speaks volumes considering how he was treated. I was emotional because my dad is my hero. I don’t know how he stayed so strong.”
Rice has returned to UNLV four times for games, including on senior night in 2016 to fulfill a promise to his eligibility-expiring players. He was also there for a ceremony to honor friend Robert Smith, one of the stars of the 1977 Final Four and a former UNLV announcer whose jersey was retired. His younger son, Dylan Rice, is a UNLV student.
Getting fired from his dream job is not the way Rice envisioned his time as a Rebel ending. He remembers Tarkanian sitting in the front row of his introductory new conference when he detailed plans to continue the program’s winning tradition.
In some ways, he did.
The Rebels had 10 wins against top-25 opponents and were nationally ranked for 25 weeks. By comparison, the program hasn’t been ranked since.
As UNLV’s coach, Rice also had four NBA Draft picks, including first overall pick Anthony Bennett in 2013, and a pair of NCAA Tournament berths.
In what would be his final season, the Rebels beat ranked foes Indiana and Oregon. But UNLV missed the tournament in consecutive seasons and was headed for a third consecutive year without making the postseason, paving the way for university officials to go a different direction.
Taking the past two years for self-evaluation has given him a chance to appreciate the journey — at UNLV and elsewhere after nearly three decades in the industry. And now he’s eager to work with the next group of players.
“He has been able to mentally recuperate and sit back and remember why he got into coaching and why he liked it so much in the first place,” Mindy Rice said. “Now that he remembers all of that, he’s ready to go. He’s itching for the next opportunity. It gets to the point where you have to say, ‘sit down.’ ”
