Jan. 7, 2005
LOGAN, Utah - While Dave Rice is in his first year as an assistant coach at Utah State, he vividly remembers his first visit to Logan and the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum 15 years ago.
It was March 1, 1990 and Rice, then a reserve player at UNLV, was sitting right next to Rebel head coach Jerry Tarkanian on the visitor's bench when the infamous water balloon exploded drenching everyone on the Rebel sideline during the Aggies-UNLV basketball game that year.
In his short time with the Aggie program, Rice has managed to stay dry during games and has been a great addition to the program after the departure of former assistant coach Randy Rahe to the University of Utah.
Rice, who played at UNLV when the Rebels won a national title in 1990 and then reached the Final Four before having their perfect season ended with an upset loss to Duke in 1991, spent the previous 11 seasons as an assistant at his alma mater.
"It was obviously very special being at UNLV," Rice said. "Anytime that you can be a part of college basketball it is special and it takes on extra special significance when you can coach at your alma mater. At the same time I am really excited to be at Utah State, which is such a quality program. For a young coach, being able to work for someone like coach Morrill, who is respected like he is in the business, I am able to learn something every day that is going to benefit me in my career, but it is great to be part of a big-time winning program."
And while Rice and his family have moved away from Las Vegas, where he has spent his entire adult life, the change to a new environment and new position, has not been too difficult. Rice worked for four different coaches at UNLV and obviously had to adjust to different styles and philosophies on a regular basis.
"The great thing about having the opportunity to work for so many different coaches at a relatively young age, is they all brought different strengths," Rice explained. "From some I learned about recruiting and relationships, from others it was different philosophies. We played different ways depending on who the coach was. That has aided my professional development. I think the one constant is that they have all been successful. I added it up one day and the coaches that I have worked for at the Division I level have won almost 1,600 Division I games. Whenever you have the opportunity to work for those kind of guys, you have to consider yourself fortunate."
Getting Rice to leave his comfort zone of UNLV was not difficult for Stew Morrill when he went looking for a replacement for Rahe, his longtime assistant.
"I have always been impressed with the quality of Coach Morrill's programs and it is great to be a part of this," Rice said. "I can remember being a player and an assistant coach at UNLV and coming up here and was always so impressed with the atmosphere of the Spectrum and the fervor of the fans. It is a great place to be coaching because people really get excited about Aggie basketball."
Rice, who grew up as the son of a longtime high school coach in Claremont, Calif., could not escape the pull of coaching in his career. Rice, who was a two-time UNLV Scholar-Athlete of the Year as well as a Rhodes Scholar candidate while majoring in political science, did not plan on becoming a coach.
"I was either going to go to law school or to medical school and had actually been accepted to go to law school and then I got this crazy idea to coach," Rice said. "Coach Tarkanian had a spot on his staff and offered me a coaching job and 13 years later I am still doing it."
Why does he do it when he could have had a successful career in law or medicine? Even his father told him that `coaching is great, but you might want to think about doing something else.'
"Number one I love college basketball," he explained. "I love the competition. The second thing is that I was really lucky to play for coach Tarkanian at UNLV and I had a wonderful experience there. I think one of the reasons I coach is that if I can somehow, in a small way, help the student-athletes that I am around, have a similar experience to the wonderful one I had, then I have really done my job. To me, I love the basketball part, but graduation day is an exciting time for me to be able to go watch a guy graduate. The relationship part is very, very important to me."
Rice still stays in contact with his former Rebel teammates, which included Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon, Anderson Hunt and his college roommate Greg Anthony, who is now an NBA commentator on ESPN. Rice said that what Anthony is doing for ESPN right now, he had to listen to everyday during his college days.
Rice described his college team, which went 69-6 in his two years there, as being treated like "mini-rock stars", due to their run and gun style of play, the fact they were from Las Vegas and the unbelievable talent they possessed.
He also points out that despite the flamboyant style they had, they won for the right reasons.
"We couldn't have had the success we had if there hadn't been great camaraderie on that team," Rice explained. "We had guys that absolutely loved to win and worked really, really hard, but we had great camaraderie. We all came from different backgrounds, but there was a real mutual respect for everyone."
Those are the same basics he hopes to pass on in in his new position at Utah State.
