Todd Simon wants to take all the emotion out of Wednesday’s home game against UNLV and treat the Rebels like just another opponent for his young Southern Utah squad. For obvious reasons, that’s going to be difficult.
Simon, the Thunderbirds’ 36-year-old head coach, has serious ties to UNLV and Las Vegas. He started as a video assistant at UNLV under Lon Kruger before moving on to Findlay Prep, where he served as an assistant before eventually becoming the head coach of the prestigious high school program. From there, he was hired as an assistant at UNLV under Dave Rice in 2013, and when Rice was fired in January of last season, Simon got the nod to finish out the campaign as the Rebels’ interim head coach.
He interviewed for the permanent job after the season ended, but when Southern Utah came calling, Simon jumped at the chance to run his own program.
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Now his former team is right on his doorstep, and Simon wants his current team to be ready for a basketball game.
“Obviously [Las Vegas] is a place where I and my family spent the last 12 years, so I have a lot of fondness for the university and a lot of the people there,” Simon said. “I maintain a lot of strong relationships with people there. I love UNLV. It’s a place where I got a degree and a great coaching opportunity. From that standpoint, I like UNLV and Las Vegas a great deal. But the game is the game and we have to focus on that.”
Southern Utah currently sits at 2-4 in Simon’s first season, and the power rankings aren’t kind to the Thunderbirds. KenPom.com ranks them 335th out of 351 Division I teams, and they rank 349th in defensive efficiency.
Simon expected some growing pains when he took the job. Southern Utah is a fixer-upper, and Simon, even with his renowned recruiting connections, will need some time to stock the roster with talent.
“We had a pretty big undertaking here, in terms of what we needed to do,” Simon said. “We got a lot done in the spring and summer just building our culture. That was priority No. 1. Now we’re trying to find the right kind of kids to build the program with. We’ve got good kids here, I’m very pleased with the kids we’ve got. They’re just young. We’ve got to have a player development philosophy here, like when you look back at the Findlay Prep days when we had kids who wanted to be great and we helped develop them.”
Listening to Simon talk about the type of players he wants to recruit to Southern Utah, you get the feeling that he could be describing one player in particular — a very familiar player who will be suiting up for the Rebels on Wednesday.
Simon coached Jalen Poyser when the young Canadian packed up and left his home country for the promise of Findlay Prep in 2012. Poyser played one season at the Henderson school before returning to Canada to finish his prep career, but he developed a strong connection with Simon. When it came time to choose a college, Poyser, a three-star recruit in the Class of 2015, chose UNLV.
Now a sophomore, Poyser is having a breakout season at point guard, averaging a team-high 18.2 points and 4.2 assists per game. He’s making 43.9 percent of his 3-pointers and giving the Rebels 33.7 minutes every night, developing into the kind of program cornerstone that Simon wants to begin attracting to Southern Utah.
“Jalen is doing exactly what we knew he could,” Simon said. “Having coached him in high school and last year [at UNLV], I always believed in his game. I know what kind of explosive scorer and lead guard he can be. He’s a hard worker and he’s got the tools to be a phenomenal guard and have a great legacy there, so it’s no surprise at all to see him having success. I’m happy for him and his family.”
But that fondness for a former player is precisely the kind of emotion Simon wants to leave outside the arena on Wednesday. He has already begun game-planning for UNLV, and that has helped make it feel more like another date on the schedule.
“Once the game prep starts, it becomes more of a neutral feeling,” Simon said. “It’s like, we’ve got an opponent, here’s what they do, here’s how we prepare. Once that starts, and then the ball goes up in the air, your five against their five, the emotion sort of gets taken out of it and it’s another game.”
Whether that approach leads to a win on Wednesday, Simon believes he’s got his program headed in the right direction.
“The community has embraced this crew,” he said. “The students are getting behind it. I think they’re really dying for a winner, but they understand the process. You hope that in a place like this, with tremendous facilities and all those things, the guys will put in the extra time and the extra work and help accelerate the development process. So far we’re encouraged.”
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