UNLV basketball:

Switching sides: Former Rebels coach Dave Rice joins staff at UNR

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L.E. Baskow

Former UNLV head basketball coach Dave Rice sits in the stands during a game against Wyoming on Saturday, Feb. 27, 2016, at the Thomas & Mack Center.

Mon, Apr 25, 2016 (10:51 a.m.)

Former UNLV basketball coach Dave Rice was fired from his dream job on Jan. 10. Now, he returns to coaching in the state of Nevada, and part of his new job will be making the in-state rivalry a nightmare for the Rebels.

UNR will hire Rice for the final opening on coach Eric Musselman’s staff, according to multiple sources. The Reno Gazette-Journal’s Chris Murray said an official announcement is expected Wednesday.

Rice has been affiliated with the UNLV side of this rivalry for more than 25 years. He was a bench player on the 1990 National Championship team, then worked for a year as a graduate assistant for coach Jerry Tarkanian before a stint as a full-time assistant from 1994 to 2004.

When he came back in 2011 to take over as head coach, Rice started his tenure 8-0 with a victory over No. 1 North Carolina. Two trips to the NCAA Tournament in his first two seasons turned out to be the high point, as Rice’s overall win total declined each season.

Rice was nearly fired after the 2014-15 season ended with a seventh-place Mountain West Conference finish, but administration instead decided to give him another season. Of course, that didn’t actually happen as a 9-7, 0-3 record brought about a mid-season firing, which kick-started a coaching search that wrapped up three days ago.

Rice is owed $300,000 a year for the next three years on his UNLV contract, meaning he'll be collecting two salaries at the same time.

At UNLV, Rice went 98-54 overall and 37-32 in Mountain West play. Prior to UNLV, Rice was a well-regarded assistant at BYU, and his calm demeanor should provide a nice contrast to the fiery Musselman.

Rice will be part of a new group of assistants, as two of Musselman’s assistants from last year were not retained (Jay Morris and Jermaine Kimbrough) and another (Dave Stewart) took an associate head coach position at Tulane.

Rice joins Ronald Dupree and Yann Hufnagel. Dupree was an assistant at LSU, where he worked with Musselman for a year, and Hufnagel was recently suspended and under investigation at Cal, where a female reporter accused him of sexual harassment.

Musselman and Rice never coached against each other last season, though Musselman handed interim coach Todd Simon his first loss. The Rebels took the rematch at home, thanks to a Pat McCaw buzzer beater at the end of regulation.

Simon is now the head coach at Southern Utah, which hosts the Rebels in the 2016-17 season. That’s going to be a theme for this year’s Rebels, as three members of last year’s staff (Simon, Rice and Ryan Miller at TCU) are on the schedule next year.

Taylor Bern can be reached at 948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Taylor on Twitter at twitter.com/taylorbern.

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