Jimmer Fredette's success is paying dividends for UNLV?

Of all the coaching changes that have happened since the 2011 Coaching Carousel kicked off back in February, perhaps the most interesting was UNLV's new hire.

Then-BYU assistant Dave Rice was brought back to the Sin City to take over for the departed-Lon Kruger. Rice has all kinds of ties to Vegas -- he was a member of the Runnin' Rebels of the early '90's that dominated college hoops, teammates with the likes of Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon, and Greg Anthony. His brother, Grant Rice, is the head coach of Las Vegas powerhouse Bishop Gorman high school, who counts 2012 studs Shabazz Muhammad (the No. 1 player in our Consensus Recruiting Rankings) and Ben Carter.

With the amount of talent currently in the Vegas area in the class of 2012, Rice's pitch for his first recruiting class is fairly easy -- come play ball in your backyard in front of your friends and family as we bring UNLV back into the national spotlight.

But that's not it.


You see, Rice was the offensive mastermind for the Cougars the past few seasons. He was the guy that decided on their offensive schemes, which means that he was the coach in charge of turning Jimmer Fredette from an under-recruited kid from upstate New York into an all-american as a junior and a national sensation as a senior; a kid that averaged 28.9 ppg and was given free reign to shoot whenever -- and from wherever -- he desired.

And as Ryan Greene (who penned a terrific piece for the Las Vegas Sun about a day in the life of recruiting with Rice) details, The Jimmer's success is helping Rice on the recruiting trail:

Now, as a first-time head coach, he's determined to bring that uptempo style with him to the desert. And once he identifies the players he believes fit it best, Jimmer Fredette's success story is one that he can pitch that will grab the attention of the high school players he's currently recruiting. It's a relevant trick he'll likely be able to pull out of his bag for many years to come.

"Jimmer deserves the bulk of the credit for what he became, but the reality is he had a lot of help from our staff," he said. "And so I think the thing that really speaks volumes is that he came to us as a good player, but did not come to us as a finished product. So, I think the fact that I can actually speak with credibility in terms of our role in helping him develop and the freedom we gave him and what that did for him.

[...]

"He compared me to Jimmer Fredette a lot," Katin Reinhardt said. "How he let him play is how he'll let me play. That freedom, being able to do that stuff, that's what I look at. Look where Jimmer got. He went to the NBA as a lottery pick. So if you could get that kind of coach to be behind you 100 percent, that's everything you could ask for."

That is a terrific chip for Rice to hold as a recruiter.

He took a kid that was essentially passed over as a high-major prospect coming out of high school and turned him into the national player of the year as a senior and a lottery pick in the 2011 NBA Draft. There isn't a single player that will be recruited by UNLV that isn't dreaming of one day becoming a star on the college level and playing in the NBA.

If Rice is able to turn a kid that was an afterthought in high school to an NBA player as a senior, what will he be able to do with a player that every school in the country wants?