Just when you think things will slow down, GSR Arena gets approved, Nevada softball gets snubbed from the NCAA Tournament, Wolf Pack baseball is on the verge of a Mountain West regular-season title and the Washoe Little League Triple-A Angels will play for first place Tuesday night at South Valleys Regional Park. Life never slows down, but the Monday Mailbag is always delivered on time. Here is this week’s addition. Thanks, as always, for the questions.

I was going to write a story this week about Nevada’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad results historically at conference tournaments, but I might as well dump that research here. Bottom line — the Wolf Pack has never been very good at conference tournaments regardless of seed. How bad has Nevada been? Here are the numbers:

* Nevada men’s basketball has won five of 42 conference tournaments (has been the No. 1 seed 10 times)

* Nevada women’s basketball has won zero of 32 conference tournaments (has been the No. 1 seed zero times)

* Nevada baseball has won zero of 18 conference tournaments (has been the No. 1 seed two times)

* Nevada softball has won one of 10 conference tournaments (has been the No. 1 seed three times)

* Nevada women’s soccer has won one of nine conference tournaments (has been the No. 1 seed zero times)

* Nevada volleyball has won zero of 10 conference tournaments (has been the No. 1 seed zero times)

I didn’t include swimming and diving; tennis; cross country; track and field; or golf since those aren’t traditional win-loss team sports. In those traditional win-loss team sports, Nevada has won seven conference tournaments in 121 appearances and was the No. 1 seed in 15 of those events. The conference tournament title wins came in men’s basketball in 1984, 1985, 2004, 2006 and 2017; softball in 2006; and women’s soccer in 2006. It won tournaments as a No. 1 seed in men’s basketball in 1985, 2004, 2006 and 2017. So, Nevada has won just 5.8 percent of conference tournaments it has played in and 26.7 percent of tournaments it entered as the No. 1 seed. It remains crazy to me Nevada baseball has never won a conference tournament in 18 tries. Yes, it is hard to win conference tournaments, but Nevada seems cursed in this category.

I wrote a full story here discussing this issue, but Nevada softball went 2-6 in Quad 1 games last season and 2-6 in Quad 1 games this season while being snubbed as a 40-win team both times. You never see teams with just two Quad 1 wins get at-large bids into the NCAA Tournament, so that was the biggest issue in the Wolf Pack’s otherwise strong résumé. As a mid-major it’s hard to schedule Quad 1 games, so you have to take advantage of the limited opportunities you get.

You could make the case it would have been in. That would have made Nevada 3-5 in Quad 1 games since the semifinal-round game was against San Diego State (RPI 29). That could have been enough to push Nevada into the field, although the selection committee also could have come up with an excuse to still snub the Wolf Pack. But I do think Nevada gets in with that victory over SDSU and lose to Fresno State in the title game, and it was close as Nevada had runners on second and third down a run with one out against the Aztecs in the final inning before being unable to cash in.

Guaranteed? Zero years. As Nevada said during Wednesday’s Reno Redevelopment Agency Board meeting, there is no agreed-to lease between men’s basketball and the Grand Sierra Resort. So, there’s no guarantee. But the expectation is Nevada men’s basketball will be in that arena forever.

Nevada said during Wednesday’s meeting that GSR owner Alex Meruelo donated $1.1 million to Nevada basketball this season. It’s unknown how much went to men’s basketball versus women’s basketball and how much went to NIL versus non-NIL causes (charter flights, etc.). But you can expect Meruelo to donate even more to NIL moving forward as he’ll want a good product in the venue to increase attendance and hotel walk-throughs. I wrote this story on that topic last month: “Week in 1,000 Words: If GSR Arena is built, Nevada basketball dreaming big. Final Four big.”

I have nothing new to report there. Nevada athletics was aiming for a full presentation and approval from the Nevada Board of Regents in April, but we’re in May and that didn’t happen yet as GSR Arena approval took precedent. I imagine the Wolf Pack is targeting the Regents’ June quarterly meeting to get approval for the indoor practice facility to ensure a summer groundbreaking.

I have not written that Nevada has gotten approval on the indoor practice facility. I have written Nevada got approval from the Board of Regents to charge up to $3.50 per credit as the main revenue source for the projected $25 million FieldHouse. That will begin in the 2025-26 academic year. There also are pictures of the facility on that link. So, the money is there to break ground this year since Nevada is using a non-traditional funding mechanism outlined here. But it must get full project approval from the Board of Regents before breaking ground. Per my last update, Nevada is hoping to break ground this summer with a 9-month timeline as the steel structure will be manufactured off-site before being pieced together on campus.

Outlined above.

The current projection has a June groundbreaking and 2028 season opening. I’d put it at 90 a percent chance. It is the A’s, after all.

I outlined the budgets for all the Mountain West and Pac-12 schools here (in football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and overall). If Nevada added $3 million in revenue, it would be first in the new MW and third in the new Pac-12 behind Gonzaga and San Diego State. It would need to add $7.337 million in revenue to surpass Gonzaga for the top spot in the MW/Pac-12. Nevada’s men’s basketball budget in the most recently available data is $5.242 million, so the Wolf Pack is forecasting to potentially double that figure. We’ll see how accurate these numbers end up being. Remember, there’s no signed lease between the sides, so it’s a pretty loose estimate.

That’s not been disclosed publicly (and likely has not been decided), but I imagine the Wolf Pack will use its priority-points system with those having the most points getting first pick of seats. In Nevada’s 2025-26 season-ticket announcement, the news release read, “With the proposed $435 million, 10,000-seat Grand Sierra Resort Arena on the horizon, renewing your seats now helps build your priority points ahead of this exciting new chapter for the program.” So, the more points, the better your seats. I’m more interested in the price points for the 25 full-sized suites and eight mini-suites plus and who gets those since they are the big revenue generators. There’s been a waiting list for suites in Mackay Stadium for years, so it will be a battle to get those GSR Arena suites.

I don’t think you’ll see a massive improvement in traditional non-conference home games, but you should see the creation of a multi-team event tournament. That’s a double-edged sword, though. Most of Nevada’s good non-league games in recent years have come from MTE events, so starting a new MTE in Reno might not initially draw that level of opponent. You’d like to think it could at least get a Cal, Stanford, St. Mary’s, etc. to Reno. I don’t see the GSR doing a postseason NIL tournament. As for craft beer, the improved food and drink options should be one of the biggest positive developments for fans when the new arena is built.

A lawsuit from the Coalition.

No idea. The Reno City Council members didn’t ask once during the 4-hour, 59-minute meeting about the traffic implications of this arena being built. I also left a voicemail with the City Manager’s office Thursday morning because I wanted to ask a few questions, including any plans for improving traffic offerings in that area. That message has not been returned.

Last week, I filed a public-record request for the contracts of all the non-conference home games for the Nevada men’s and women’s basketball teams for the 2025-26 season. I’m waiting for that to be fulfilled and will post a story when that happens. On the men’s side, the Wolf Pack owes road games to Santa Clara and Washington State next season with no home games being returned as part of multi-game series.

It would cost UNLV around $40 million to leave the Mountain West for the Pac-12 with the Rebels also giving the MW the media rights to its home games through 2032. I just don’t see a way UNLV joins the Pac-12 by the deadline (that deadline is the end of this month) for 2026 inclusion in the Pac-12. Texas State seems like the only reasonable option for the Pac-12.

I think they’ll come to an agreement around $100 million in exit fees and poaching penalties combined with the Mountain West currently owed around $145 million.

You’d have to give me a specific sport for me to pull numbers, but San Diego State is the Mountain West’s best all-around athletic department with a league-best 48 league titles since 2013 (New Mexico is second at 40 and Colorado State third at 33), so it would make sense that Nevada has struggled there. As Ron Burgundy once said, I imagine Wolf Pack fans have uttered “Go F*** Yourself, San Diego” over the years.

No. Nevada owns the tiebreaker over Fresno State and New Mexico and leads both by a game in the Mountain West standings. Nevada has already locked in a top-two seed at the MW Tournament, meaning a first-round bye. And its magic number for the No. 1 seed is two (any combination of two Nevada wins and/or two losses from either Fresno State or New Mexico). The only way Nevada doesn’t win at least a share of the MW regular-season title is if it gets swept by San Jose State and Fresno State or New Mexico sweeps the other this week.

He has not picked a new school yet.

Boise State, which has a good-sized budget but not one that usually tops the conference. Really, Nevada needs to go back 25 years and do what Boise State did when both were in the same place around the turn of the century, which was to invest a lot of state and university money into athletics early on so a fan base was created to increase ticket sales and donations to lead the revenue model. But Boise State has done it right for the last 30 years and is generally on the cutting edge (for example, it crushed other Mountain West schools early on in NIL).

1) We don’t play extra innings after six innings in Triple-A at Washoe Little League until the playoffs.

2) This list is really two guys in Kitan Crawford and Tory Horton. Jaden Smith and Peter Montini both got rookie mini-camp deals, but it’s hard to even get to training camp from there. I’d give Horton a 90 percent chance of making the Seahawks’ 53-man roster and Crawford an 80 percent chance of making the Cardinals’ 53 man.

1) I say Coach ______ when referring to Wolf Pack coaches. That’s a nice sign of respect, and also, if I forget their name temporarily, I can also just say “Hey, Coach” and get away with it.

2) As for Colin Kaepernick, he might have only lasted that half-year of playing time at Nevada in 2007. He did enough in that 69-67 four-overtime loss to Boise State — 243 passing yards, 177 rushing yards, five touchdowns — to get plucked by a Power 4 school. Boise State lost starting QB Taylen Green to Arkansas last offseason, and Green is Kaepernick-lite. But Kaepernick leaving the Pistol offense would have ended up being bad for his career. Part of what made his so special at Nevada was his fit in Nevada’s read-option Pistol created by Chris Ault and his offensive staff. So, a Kaepernick transfer post-2007 probably have hurt both sides a lot. That offense was perfect for his skillset and helped him avoid his weaknesses.

You can also throw Nick Fazekas in this discussion. In the NIL era, there’s almost no chance Fazekas stays four years at Nevada and wins three WAC player of the year awards. I asked Fazekas about that last year and he said, “It would have been hard (to stay), right? Money talks. I didn’t have to deal with the business of basketball until I got to the NBA. But these poor kids at 18, 19 years old, they’ve got agents and they’re dealing with the business of basketball. And I just don’t think it’s really fair. But it’s a great point. If UNC comes or someone comes and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got all this money for you. You can come play in the ACC.’ Obviously, the ACC is a bigger platform to try and play in the NBA since that was the ultimate goal, I don’t think you’re going to see as many legacy type of players like myself anymore because everyone’s going to end up just picking up and going.”

I want Connor McDavid and the Oilers to win the Stanley Cup. I just don’t think it will happen because you have to play defense at some stage to win the Cup. I hope I’m wrong. I do think the Oilers get past VGK.

1) Nevada was a 38-point underdog to open the 2023 season at No. 6 USC. I’ll use that as the betting line for the Nevada-Penn State game to open the 2025 season as the Nittany Lions will be preseason top five if not No. 1.

2) Rum

We posted it on the website last week; you can see it at the end of the Mailbag, TV edition here.

All of the formats are almost exactly the same now. The NBA champion is the most true representative of the league’s best team, but that’s a result of the sport rather than the format. You get less upsets in basketball than others since fewer players are involved.

Coach Mumme’s tomatoes are fine.

Regular Long Island Ice Tea ingredients (vodka, tequila, light rum, triple sec, gin) with a dash of Rebel tears.

Yes, but my Buffalo Bills lost a playoff game on a forward-lateral kick return for a touchdown that left 3 seconds on the clock and also lost a Super Bowl on a missed 47-yard field goal with 3 seconds left on the clock. I know painful losses.

Hell, we don’t even know if the United States will have a functioning democracy in 10 years let alone 20, so it’s hard to predict what the Wolf Pack logo will look like then. Nevada seems to like its logo, so I don’t foresee any changes in the next decade.

See y’all next week!

Sports columnist Chris Murray provides insight on Northern Nevada sports. He writes a weekly Monday Mailbag despite it giving him a headache and it taking several hours to write. But people seem to like it, so he does it anyway. Contact him at crmurray@sbgtv.com or follow him on Twitter @ByChrisMurray.