The Thomas & Mack Center went quiet fast Thursday afternoon.
Utah State’s Mason Falslev scored 17 points in the first half alone. Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn – the Mountain West’s leading scorer, the player San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher called “as good as any player in the country” just four days earlier – went 0-for-4 from three and never found a rhythm. The final was 80-60. The season was over.
Seventeen wins. Sixteen losses. Fourteen years without the NCAA Tournament. And now, an offseason that will matter more than the season itself.
How We Got Here
Josh Pastner did not inherit a program. He inherited a crater.
When he arrived in March 2025, star guard Dedan Thomas Jr. left for LSU within days. Then Jaden Henley, who would burn UNLV for 28 points in a February win for Grand Canyon. Then Jeremiah Cherry, Brooklyn Hicks, Jailen Bedford, Pape N’Diaye. Seven players gone in weeks. Then two of his most important new additions never played a game: Myles Che – recruited to start at point guard, a 43 percent three-point shooter from UC Irvine – broke his foot before the season, attempted a comeback, and broke it again. Ladji Dembele suffered the same fate, twice, and was limited to five games before his year ended for good.
Pastner spent an entire season without his intended starting backcourt and had to convert Gibbs-Lawhorn into a part-time distributor on every possession where he also needed to be the primary scorer.
“We had our starting point guard and our starting center injured the entire year,” Pastner said after Thursday’s loss. “But bottom line, this team has gotten better. That’s all you can ask.”
He is right. He is also asking the bar to be set low enough to clear it.
For context: Lon Kruger started 17-14 in his first year. Dave Rice started 26-9. Kevin Kruger started 18-14. Only Marvin Menzies, at 11-21, posted a clearly worse debut than Pastner’s 17-16. The program has a .680 winning percentage across 57 years, four Final Fours, and a national championship. The last fourteen seasons have looked nothing like that. When the record is mediocre, the identity has to be unmistakable.
What the Numbers Actually Show
UNLV was excellent at scoring and bad at stopping anyone.
The offense ranked in the top third of Division I nationally – roughly as efficient as programs that won 25 games. The defense ranked in the bottom third. UNLV could put up 80 points and still lose because it gave up 82. The team shot 68.7 percent from the free throw line, second-worst in the Mountain West – and in Thursday’s loss to Utah State, that number dropped to 53 percent. They ranked ninth out of twelve Mountain West teams in rebounding despite having multiple players 6-foot-8 and taller. And the non-conference record was 6-9, including home losses to UT Martin and Montana, with a 0-4 record on neutral courts. There was never going to be an at-large case built on that.
The bright spots were real. Gibbs-Lawhorn led the Mountain West in scoring at 20.9 points per game and ranked in the 96th percentile nationally in shooting efficiency – a single number that accounts for every type of field goal attempt plus free throws. In February alone he averaged 30 points on 57 percent shooting. His 42-point overtime win over Nevada on February 28, hitting 8 of 14 threes in front of a season-high crowd of 7,466, was one of the best individual performances in college basketball all season.
That attendance number deserves a moment. Seven thousand, four hundred and sixty-six people in an 18,500-seat arena. The largest on-campus basketball arena in the country. Season high. Pastner has called the home crowds an “eye-opening experience.” Fans are not staying away because they do not care. They are staying away because they no longer recognize what they are watching.
Tyrin Jones was the other revelation. The Las Vegas-raised freshman led the Mountain West in blocked shots and ranked in the 95th percentile nationally at altering shots per possession. As a teenager against grown men. The game-saving block against Wyoming with three seconds left in the tournament opener was not the exception. It was the norm.
There is a structural explanation for some of this. After the Nevada loss in late January – one of three straight defeats during a stretch where UNLV gave up 56 second-half points to its in-state rival – Pastner said, “My heart hurts right now. Really, my heart hurts.” The words sounded like urgency. The film showed something harder to fix than urgency.
For seven seasons across multiple coaching staffs, UNLV has rostered the same shape: high-usage scoring guards, combo wings asked to initiate offense, and limited true organization at the point of attack. The full-season assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.26 is the second-best mark in that seven-year stretch – progress that looks meaningful until you understand how it was generated. Turnovers dropped to 10.6 per game, a seven-year low. Assists matched the program’s best recent output. But those numbers belong to one player, not to a system. Gibbs-Lawhorn created structure on possessions that had no structure behind them. Remove him, and the floor collapses back to where it has been every other year. That is not a foundation. That is load-bearing individual talent on a roster without one.
The Lineup That Worked – And What It Loses
At its best, UNLV had a five-man group that was genuinely hard to beat. When Gibbs-Lawhorn, Fleming, Hamilton, Bannarbie, and Jones shared the floor in conference games, that unit outscored opponents by 53.5 points per 100 possessions – a margin that ranked in the 97th percentile among all lineups in the country. Elite units run at plus-20. This one ran at plus-53.
Four of those five pieces are gone or at serious risk of leaving.
Kimani Hamilton – gone. The senior from High Point averaged 13.1 points and 5.0 rebounds, shot 54 percent at the rim, scored 23 in the tournament win over Wyoming, and provided the veteran composure a young roster needed. Eligibility exhausted.
Al Green – gone. The senior from Louisiana Tech started the season in the rotation and was the team’s most accurate finisher at the rim among backcourt players at 83 percent. His minutes quietly faded to zero by February as the lineup solidified around others. Eligibility exhausted.
Walter Brown – gone. The senior stepped up late, contributing 9 points and 10 rebounds in the Wyoming win and giving Pastner positional versatility at 6-foot-5. Eligibility exhausted.
Howie Fleming Jr. – almost certainly gone, but with an asterisk. The redshirt senior from UTRGV was the team’s connector all year: 9.0 points, 6.2 rebounds, best assist-to-turnover ratio on the roster, two triple-doubles late in the season. When the play broke down and someone needed to hold the ball without turning it over, it was Fleming. His career has been interrupted by injuries at multiple stops, and there is a petition path under NCAA rules that could grant him an additional year of eligibility. Whether he and UNLV pursue it together is one of the quieter offseason stories. If he comes back, it fills a significant hole. If he does not, Pastner needs to replace that role in the portal.
The Two Stars
Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn
Everything else flows from this.
Under current NCAA rules, any player can declare for the NBA Draft, gather feedback on their professional value, and withdraw before the deadline to keep their college eligibility intact. Gibbs-Lawhorn can also simply enter the transfer portal. All three doors – stay, test the draft, transfer – are open right now. What makes his situation particularly urgent is that he is coming off a season ranking in the 96th percentile nationally in shooting efficiency. Power conference programs target exactly that profile every April when the portal opens.
Pastner said it plainly on March 1: “There’s a chance there is no retention. You’ve got to start over.”
UNLV’s NIL collective is building toward a $3 million basketball budget – competitive in this conference, not competitive against what major programs will offer a player with one year of eligibility remaining and those numbers. The financial backdrop makes it harder. UNLV athletics carries $26.7 million in debt. The plan to retire it relies partly on Mountain West exit fees from the five departing programs – fees now tied up in litigation with an uncertain timeline. The athletic department posted a $2.5 million surplus last year, but overall flexibility is limited.
There is a precedent worth knowing. Last spring, UNLV quarterback Anthony Colandrea – the Mountain West Offensive Player of the Year – publicly pledged his commitment to the program, then left for Nebraska when a reported $2 million deal materialized. Pastner is fighting that same market.
The basketball case for staying is genuinely strong. At UNLV, Gibbs-Lawhorn owns the offense – every play, every late possession. At a bigger program, the hierarchy is already set before he walks in the door. One more dominant season in a system built around him, against a Mountain West that just lost its five best programs, is the clearest path to maximizing his draft value. He came here because he needed a stage. He built it. The argument for leaving is financial, not basketball.
Whether UNLV can match that argument is the question that defines this offseason.
Tyrin Jones
Jones has said nothing publicly. He is a Las Vegas kid who stayed home. That matters.
But here is how it works. A freshman leads the Mountain West in blocked shots and ranks among the top five percent of all college players at protecting the rim, with three years of eligibility remaining. His agent’s job is simple: find out which program will pay the most to have him next year. UCLA. Michigan. Kentucky. Kansas. Duke. It is not personal. It is a transaction. And UNLV has to compete in that market with a fraction of the resources those programs have.
“He’s from here” is a sentiment, not a retention strategy.
The case for Jones staying is rooted in his own shot chart. In conference play this season, he attempted five three-pointers total. He shot 44 percent from the free throw line. He is an elite specialist right now – a rim-runner who converts layups at 67 percent and deters everything within eight feet of the basket – but defenses do not have to respect him from the outside at all. The development he needs happens faster in a featured role at UNLV than in someone else’s established rotation at a power conference program. At UNLV next year he is the defensive centerpiece. Somewhere else, he is adjusting to a system that was not built around him.
Pastner needs to deliver that case as a concrete plan, not a sales pitch. And the collective needs to compete financially.
The Rest of the Roster
Every player on this roster can enter the transfer portal. None of them are confirmed back. What follows is what Pastner has to work with – if he can keep it.
Myles Che is the most important name here, and he has never played a minute for UNLV. He broke his foot before the season, tried to return, broke it again. Two fractures, zero games. If he stays, his presence is not just one healthy player added to the roster – it is the only solution to a structural problem that has defined this program for seven years. UNLV has not had a true primary organizer – a point guard who controls tempo, creates advantages, and makes the game easier for everyone else – in any consistent way across multiple coaching staffs. This season’s best ball-movement numbers in years were generated by Gibbs-Lawhorn improvising, not by a system functioning. Che, who averaged 12.1 points on 43 percent from three across 38 starts at UC Irvine, is the player who turns improvisation into structure. If he is here and healthy, Gibbs-Lawhorn becomes a pure scorer operating in space someone else created. If he is not, UNLV runs the same committee offense it has run since 2019 – just with a different group of names running it.
Jacob Bannarbie shot 62.7 percent at the rim and grabbed offensive rebounds at a rate in the 80th percentile nationally. If he stays, he is the most underappreciated piece of the frontcourt and the most natural fill for the Hamilton void. If he goes, Pastner loses the one proven interior finisher not named Jones.
Isaac Williamson averaged 8.4 points and appeared in the team’s best lineup combinations as a freshman. His turnover rate raised questions about whether he is a ball-handler or a spot-up scorer – a role question that needs an answer before he can be built around at either end.
Ladji Dembele broke his foot twice and managed just five games. In those five games, his block percentage matched Jones’s profile. The fanbase has never seen him play a full season. Neither has Pastner, for that matter.
Emmanuel Stephen was exactly what UNLV needed on the offensive glass – a 7-footer whose second-chance rate ranked among the best in the country. He was inconsistent everywhere else, turned it over too often, and shot 44 percent from the free throw line. The tools are real. So is the gap between what he showed and what the role requires.
Naas Cunningham came in as a top-75 national recruit and was one of the least efficient offensive players in college basketball at his usage level. He has the physical profile. He has not yet found the game inside it.
What Needs to Be Added
Assume nothing about who stays. Even if every player currently on scholarship returns and Che is finally healthy, there are still three real holes.
A scoring forward. Hamilton’s 13.1 points per game came in a role requiring veteran shot-making in the mid-range and at the free throw line when Gibbs-Lawhorn was being doubled. Bannarbie is not that player yet, Cunningham did not deliver it last year, and Dembele is unproven. Pastner needs a 6-foot-8 forward who can score from all three levels and defend in space – someone the portal can provide but only if the money is there.
Wing defense and shooting. UNLV shot 31.8 percent from three this season while opponents shot 34.5. The gap is real and it shows up in the defensive rating. A 6-foot-6 wing who can guard and shoot above 38 percent from three is the most common portal target in the country every spring, which means the bidding is fierce. UNLV needs at least one, and the second unit needs shooting depth regardless of what Fleming decides.
The Conference and the Window
Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State, and Utah State are leaving for the Pac-12. Hawaii, UC Davis, and UTEP are coming in. The programs that beat UNLV in the regular-season finale and ended their tournament run will not be in the conference next year.
If Pastner can keep this roster intact and healthy, UNLV is a legitimate Mountain West favorite in 2026-27. The 14-year NCAA Tournament drought could end in year two. That is not optimism. It is a realistic reading of the landscape – contingent entirely on an offseason that has to go right.
The catch: a weaker Mountain West may also be a one-bid league. If UNLV loses in the conference tournament, an at-large case built on wins over Hawaii and UTEP will not survive. The automatic bid may be the only path – which means every February game matters more than it has in years, and the non-conference schedule has to improve. Home losses to UT Martin and Montana cannot happen again.
The Debt Behind All of It
UNLV athletics carries $26.7 million in debt. The plan to pay it down relies partly on Mountain West exit fees from the departing five programs – fees now tied up in litigation with no guaranteed timeline. The NIL collective is building toward $3 million. The football program’s $17.5 million contract for Dan Mullen contributed to the hole basketball is now trying to recruit out of.
Pastner’s contract paid him $500,000 in year one. Year two starts now at $1 million, with the primary deliverable always being NCAA Tournament appearances. The clock is running, and the resources are not yet there.
“I need to get out there and fundraise and hustle,” Pastner said. “We need someone with deep pockets and long arms.”
The Bottom Line
Three starters are gone. A fourth may petition to return. Two stars are openly at risk. Every other player on the roster can walk into the portal tomorrow – and in this era, some of them will. A point guard who has never played here may be the most important name on next year’s team, if he comes back. Three portal additions are needed at minimum, probably more. And all of it has to happen against the backdrop of $26.7 million in debt and a NIL budget that cannot match what the other side of the phone call is offering.
The window is real. The opportunity is real. But in this era, loyalty is a financial conversation first.
Phone calls started today. Josh Pastner will spend the spring fundraising for the resources to compete in a market that has already shown – in this city, in this athletic department – what happens when the money somewhere else is bigger than the feeling of staying home.
Whether UNLV has the urgency to match it is the only thing that matters between now and October.