Cody Doolin could be the ideal antidote to what has ailed UNLV
Shortly after Cody Doolin abruptly left the University of San Francisco two weeks into his senior season, UNLV coach Dave Rice called to gauge the point guard's interest in joining the Rebels this year.
By the time he hung up the phone, Rice had a hunch Doolin's recruitment would be unusual.
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• Oct. 16: Cody Doolin could be the ideal antidote to what has ailed UNLV
What drove Doolin to quit the team at USF was an incident at practice that began with he and a teammate scuffling and escalated when Dons coach Rex Walters gathered the rest of the players around them and urged them to settle their differences with a fist fight. The incident scarred Doolin enough that the finance major initially told Rice that he wasn't sure he wanted to play basketball anymore and that he was close to accepting an enticing job offer from a company based in his hometown of Austin, Texas.
"Usually you recruit against other schools to get a player, but in this case we were also recruiting against the private sector," Rice said. "I told him I totally understand if he wanted to go into the job market but I stressed that I thought it was important for him to have positive closure to his basketball career and this was the place to do it."
Doolin's decision to take Rice's advice to heart and give basketball one more shot could turn out to be highly beneficial for both him and UNLV.
For Doolin, UNLV offers a chance to rekindle his love for the sport, to start for a winning program and to finish his college career on a bigger stage. For UNLV, Doolin has the potential to singlehandedly address many of the problems that contributed to the Rebels underachieving under Rice the past couple years.
Even though Rice has stockpiled more talent than any UNLV coach since the program's golden era under Jerry Tarkanian, the Rebels haven't won an NCAA tournament game the past three seasons and failed to even reach the postseason last March. A recurring issue has been the absence of a classic pass-first point guard to organize the offense and set an unselfish tone. Rice has also acknowledged UNLV lacked sufficient team chemistry, hustle and leadership last season despite its veteran-heavy rotation.
With all five starters from last season having departed and three decorated but unproven freshmen expected to start this year, UNLV desperately needed a stabilizing influence at point guard. That's why Rice spent so much time and effort pursuing Doolin, a three-year starter at USF who averaged 13.0 points and 7.0 assists before he left the Dons yet is as renowned for his humility and leadership skills as his on-court production.
"For a few weeks after I left USF, I just tried to gather myself and figure out what I wanted to do and whether I wanted to play again," Doolin said. "Coach Rice reached out to me and I really just had a great connection with him from day one. I really loved the program and liked everything he was about. That's one of the main reasons I decided to play basketball again."
It's typically difficult for a newcomer to emerge as an influential voice right away, but Doolin took steps over the summer to forge relationships with his young, talented teammates and ensure he'd have the credibility to lead. He made a point of giving the freshmen rides to their apartments after workouts or spending time with them off campus — little things that helped them learn to trust him immediately.
Doolin insists the freshmen have displayed maturity and work ethic beyond their years so far, but he isn't afraid to offer advice or encouragement when warranted either. He also leads by example, passing up contested shots to get a better look for a teammate or finishing first in 29 straight sprints at a recent practice only to tear into himself after freshman Dwayne Morgan beat him to the baseline on the 30th.
"A leader like Cody is something we desperately needed on our team this year," Rice said. "We did some good things last year but I was disappointed we weren't better in the areas of consistent effort and team chemistry and I say that publicly. It's critically important we shore up those areas this season, and having someone with Cody's experience and leadership qualities will help us move in the right direction with the young talent we have."
All of Rice's praise for Doolin's communication skills and work ethic comes as no surprise to those who have known the point guard longest. They say Doolin showed the qualities of a natural leader even early in his high school career.
Tres Ellis, Doolin's coach at Westlake High School in Austin, said the point guard always possessed a knack for knowing when to encourage his teammates and when to pull one off to the side and offer advice or respectful criticism. Once, during a big timeout in a rivalry game, Doolin even sensed Ellis was stressed and calmed down his coach by telling him, "Relax. We've got this."
"He's one of those guys everyone listens to and everyone respects," Ellis said. "He never chastised anyone. He had a really good way of connecting with his teammates — even younger guys. He'd tell them,'Hey that's OK, do it next time' or 'We need you to do it like this.' He had a natural sense of respect for others. Even if they weren't at his level, he encouraged them to get better and he taught them how to do it."
Since coaches are so quick to laud his intangibles and he's so quick to poke fun at his own modest speed and scrawny 6-foot-2 frame, Doolin's physical gifts and on-court production tend to get overlooked. Sure, he'll never be Derrick Rose or Russell Westbrook, but the mop-haired, rail-thin guard is not nearly as overmatched athletically at the college level as he'd have you believe.
Ellis said that opponents underestimated Doolin even in high school when he was one of the Austin area's most productive players. In one game, the opposing guards kept trash talking Doolin about his game and his appearance even as he was destroying them on the court.
"He had like 20 at the half and 41 at the end of the game, and they were still trying to talk to him like they could stop him," Ellis said. "At halftime, we were walking off the court and I overheard the opposing coach telling his players, "Why are you still talking to him? I told you he plays better when you trash talk him and he's lighting you up."
Opposing players weren't the only ones who overlooked Doolin. San Francisco was one of the few programs to offer Doolin a scholarship despite his impressive statistics and winning track record at Westlake.
That proved to be a wise choice by Walters as Doolin made an instant impact with his knack for finding creases in the defense, his decision making with the ball in his hands and his vision in the open floor. Before the incident at practice that led to Doolin's departure from USF, Walters was ready to argue that his point guard was the WCC's best, ahead of more heralded players like Gonzaga's Kevin Pangos, BYU's Matt Carlino or LMU's Anthony Ireland.
"He may not look like a player when he walks on the floor and he's not going to wow you with his size and his body, but the bottom line is he has led our team to so many victories," Walters said last October.
"He's as good as anyone I've been around at getting guys shots. He's good enough that he can score it on his own, but he literally can tell you going full speed at any moment where the other nine guys are on the court and maybe even what some of the coaches are saying. He has great vision and great feel to really find people."
That skill set should be as good a match for Rice's trademark up-tempo system as Doolin's humble, even-keeled demeanor is for UNLV's freshman-heavy roster. At least, that was Rice's thought process when he began his dogged pursuit of Doolin and urged the point guard not to give up basketball just yet.
Five months after putting his other goals on hold for a year and enrolling at UNLV for graduate school, Doolin has no regrets. He enjoys playing for Rice, interacting with his young teammates and having the opportunity to help the Rebels shed the reputation of underachievers.
"It has been a great experience so far," Doolin said. "We have a young team but we have the potential to be pretty good. We have the ability to force turnovers, block shots and finish in transition. If we can hone in on all the little things like taking charges, getting loose balls and making hustle plays and combine that with the talent we have here, we can be pretty special."
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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
