Women’s basketball became an official NCAA sport in 1981. In the 45 seasons since then, Nevada has posted a winning record just 13 times. It has hit 20 wins only twice. And it has never won a conference title or played in an NCAA Tournament.
Those stats should embarrass the Wolf Pack. Not for a lack of effort. Every coach associated with the program over the decades has given everything they have to create the Wolf Pack’s first title team. But none has cracked the code.
Nevada will have a new coach next season after Amanda Levens was fired Monday following a third 20-loss season in the last four years. Levens leaves the Wolf Pack as the program leaders in wins (126) and winning percentage (45.1). Levens led the Wolf Pack within a basket of the 2018 Mountain West Tournament title and earned a pair of WBI berths. She posted two of the school’s top-three win totals with 19 victories in her debut season and 20 more in 2022.
But only three of her nine seasons ended with a winning record with six of those seasons resulting in a seventh place or worse finish in the MW, including this year’s 10th-place result. The fact Nevada’s most successful coach, Levens, had an overall losing record speaks to the struggles the program has endured and how low a bar has been set over the last 45 years. And there’s no reason for that to be the case.
Reno is a basketball town. The Nevada men’s program has been one of the West Coast’s top operations in the 2000s with 12 conference titles, nine NCAA Tournament berths and 15 20-win campaigns this century.
That success has not been mirrored by the Wolf Pack women despite a program budget that has exceed UNLV in recent years despite the Rebels winning seven MW titles in the last five seasons; despite regularly chartering flights this year; despite having NIL support from the Grand Sierra Resort; and despite having facilities that include a $12 million locker room/players lounge and relatively new practice facility. No Wolf Pack program has perfect resources. But many rank behind those enjoyed by Nevada women’s basketball.
The team’s $2,813,780 budget in fiscal year 2025 was double that of any other Nevada women’s sport with the potential exception of track and field and cross country, two programs that are included as one for accounting reasons. Yet, success has been fleeting for basketball while Nevada swim and dive routinely has MW podium finishes; softball won a regular-season MW title last year; women’s tennis finished second in the conference; and women’s golf has flirted with NCAA Regional berths. Even track and field is coming off a second-place MW finish last month at the indoor MW championships.
Why has Nevada historically struggled in women’s basketball? It’s hard to figure out. But the Wolf Pack’s expectations for the program have never been high. Nevada’s administration has seemingly been fine with floundering results in women’s hoops.
Jane Albright had strong tenures at Northern Illinois and Wisconsin before a disaster at Wichita State. She was hired by Nevada after going 48-95 in five seasons with the Shockers and given nine years with the Wolf Pack despite going 115-165 with five losing records in her last six seasons, a stretch where Nevada won just 32.4 percent of its games.
In 2017, she was replaced with Levens, who also was given nine seasons after a pair of premature five-year extensions, the first of which wasn’t even announced until NSN put in a public-records request for the deal. Levens’ tenure had some high points, but Nevada failed to advance past the MW Tournament quarterfinal in any of the last eight seasons. The only other MW team not to reach a semifinal in that period was Utah State, which has lost 20-plus games in six of the last seven seasons.
Since the NET ranking system was created six years ago, Nevada’s average NET ranking has been 199.5 with the team going 1-6 in Quad 1 games, 3-26 in Quad 2 games and 18-36 in Quad 3 games during those six seasons.
Nobody likes when coaches get fired and lives are uprooted. Levens’ program did more community outreach than any team on campus, and did it because it was the right thing to do and not to get positive publicity. But from a competitive requirement standpoint, the Albright and Levens tenures showed Nevada did not demand on-court results typically required with the more high-profile sports on campus. During their combined 18 seasons, only six included winning records.
While that might be acceptable given Nevada’s history, the Wolf Pack should want and should require more from this program. Women’s basketball is more popular than ever and has the potential to earn revenue, which is essential for a school like Nevada. The standard for women’s basketball should be higher than other sports on campus, much like it is for football and men’s basketball. This is one of every school’s most important sports in garnering department interest and engagement.
That makes Stephanie Rempe’s hire of Nevada’s next women’s basketball coach one of the most important of her tenure. The MW, as currently constructed, has been a winnable league with the conference not placing two teams in the NCAA Tournament since 2010. Over the last seven seasons, seven of the MW’s 11 programs (pre-Grand Canyon) won at least one conference championship. Nevada was not one of them. The others were Air Force, San Jose State and Utah State.
With titles being passed around the conference, Nevada has seemed content with mediocrity the last 20 years, which is never a good example for one of your most important sports. The new MW will be even more winnable with three of the top-four teams in the league this season — San Diego State (the regular-season champ), Colorado State (the tournament champ) and Boise State (six MW titles in the last decade) — headed to the Pac-12. The schools replacing them include Hawaii (NET 117), UC Davis (171), UTEP (268).
Potential lies ahead, but only if Nevada sets a new standard of expectation for its women’s basketball program, which in two seasons will become the sole tenant of Lawlor Events Center as the men’s team moves into the arena at Grand Sierra Resort. That will mark the opportunity to brand the arena as the home of women’s basketball. And with that should come a more direct focus and requirement this become a winning program, something it’s never really been.
Columnist Chris Murray provides insight on Northern Nevada sports. Contact him at crmurray@sbgtv.com or follow him on Twitter at @ByChrisMurray.