Josh Pastner has been named the new coach of the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels men’s basketball team; however, this season, he will be visiting one of his old stomping grounds. The Rebels will face off against a familiar foe that Pastner once coached.
In a game that was once scheduled for December 6, a new date has now been set for Pastner to return to the FedEx Forum and face off with the Memphis Tigers down in Tennessee: November 16.
Pastner spent years under John Calipari as an assistant at Memphis before eventually taking over the head coaching job in 2009. He remained the head coach for seven seasons before moving on following the 2016 season. During his stint with the Tigers, the program went 167 – 73, appeared in four NCAA Tournaments, and won an AAC Conference Title. He found plenty of success at Memphis before moving on to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in 2016.
The Tigers are now led by head coach Penny Hardaway, who led Memphis to a victory over UNLV in Las Vegas last season. So there should be no lack of motivation for the Rebels in that game. Pastner will, of course, want to knock off his old team and beat the most successful coach they’ve had since himself, and the players who remain from last year’s roster will surely want to avenge that loss.
Memphis is also a notable name in college basketball and could be a nice measuring stick for where the new-look Rebels are at by the time we get to November. Expectations have been raised after hiring a big-name coach like Pastner, and from the sounds of it, they wouldn’t have it any other way.
