Nevada is dancing in the NCAA tournament again, and it doesn’t plan on stopping

LAS VEGAS — As the final moments ticked away on Saturday afternoon in Sin City, the dream started to feel more and more real for the Nevada Wolf Pack.

With nine seconds left, senior D.J. Fenner skipped over to the pocket of Nevada fans inside the Thomas & Mack Center and waved his arms to start the celebration.

With five seconds left, head coach Eric Musselman exhaled for the first time in nearly 40 minutes, then began walking down the sideline to shake hands with the Colorado State coaching staff.

And when time finally expired in the Mountain West tournament final, the entire Wolf Pack team bounced off the bench and onto the court to celebrate the program’s first trip to the Big Dance in the last decade.

Roughly 24 hours later and 450 miles away from the Las Vegas Strip, Nevada was back home in Reno to watch the Selection Show and start its preparations for the NCAA tournament.

Word soon came down that the Wolf Pack would be headed to Milwaukee as a 12 seed to open the tournament against Iowa State. Almost instantly, they became a trendy upset pick.

ESPN’s Jay Bilas took Musselman’s team to knock off the Big 12 tournament champions, and Seth Davis said, “I spy another 5-12 upset in the making” on CBS’s telecast immediately after the pairing was announced.

Nevada has the classic build of a Cinderella, starting at the top with their energetic and experienced head coach. The son of former NBA coach Bill Musselman, Eric has made stops at nearly every level of the sport.

Musselman was the head coach of clubs in the NBA, D-League, CBA, and USBL, and even led the Dominican Republic and Venezuelan national teams before jumping into college ball as an assistant. He spent a combined three seasons on the staffs at Arizona State and LSU before the Wolf Pack came calling, going to two NCAA tournaments and losing twice in the first round by a total of three points.

Now that he’s at the head of the ship, the 52-year-old is looking for a different result. Even if he is returning to the same site where his Sun Devils were beaten by Texas on a buzzer-beater three years ago.

“I was more than fortunate to go to the tournament two of my three years as an assistant in college basketball,” Musselman said after Saturday’s win. “I just told the guys that we’re going to enjoy this. But just because we’re happy to be going doesn’t mean we aren’t going there to compete and win.”

Nevada is led by a pair of potential NBA prospects in Missouri State transfer Marcus Marshall and one-time Oregon State signee Cameron Oliver. The pair are averaging 19.8 and 15.8 points per game, respectively.

Marshall, a senior, was unable to make the tournament during the first three years of his college career while playing in Springfield.

“It’s crazy to think about,” the point guard said. “The first time I ever talked to Coach Muss, all we talked about was making the tournament. He told me how he was going to change the program around and he ended up being a man of his word.”

Assisting in that turnaround is Jordan Caroline, a sophomore who can play both the two and three positions. He’s hard to miss, wearing a hair fade Mohawk à la Odell Beckham Jr. and Allen Crabbe.

Caroline hit the game-winning three-pointer in his team’s historic comeback at New Mexico earlier this season, and most recently won Mountain West tournament MVP after scoring a team-high 23 points in the final.

“I wanted to help my team any way I could to get to the [NCAA] tournament, whether that was scoring or taking it upon myself to guard first-team [all-conference] players,” Caroline said. “It’s a great feeling knowing that we now have an automatic bid to go to the Dance.”

The Wolf Pack have been dancing for a couple weeks now.

They knocked off Colorado State back on March 4 in The Biggest Little City in the World, clinching the program’s first regular-season conference title since 2012. Musselman celebrated in very Musselman fashion, running shirtless around the floor at the Lawlor Events Center and waving his championship t-shirt over his head.

Seven days later, Nevada held a similar celebration on its rivals’ floor in Las Vegas, cutting down the nets and posing for selfies with the Wolf Pack fans who made the trip south.

The Wolf Pack are the class of the Mountain West. Now they take their game to the national stage — a stage that, despite the team’s recent history, doesn’t seem too big for a team led by a longtime coach and NBA-bound players.

If all goes according to plan, Nevada will be dancing for a while.