On weekday mornings, Nevada Sports Net will recap three big headlines of the day in its Morning Download. Read below for today’s topics.
1. Nevada football bringing back blue helmets in 2025
The Nevada football team is bringing back its navy blue helmets for the 2025 season, Wolf Pack coach Jeff Choate told NSN’s Shannon Kelly during the Mountain West media days. During Choate’s first season as head coach last year, the Wolf Pack wore silver or white helmets. Blue is being added to the 2025 rotation. “During recruiting, you’ve got to have the obligatory photo shoot,” Choate said. “And the guys would go right to the blue helmets over and over and and over again. And I’m, like, ‘All right, I get it. We probably shouldn’t have gotten rid of the blue helms.’ I don’t pay much attention to it. I love clean, traditional, simple. But then I think about it and I’m, like, ‘Yeah, well, they had blue helmets for a long-ass time here, so we probably ought to wear them, too.” Nevada debuted a new blue version of its helmet for the 2022 season to kick off the Ken Wilson era.
2. NCAA basketball tournament unlikely to expand this season
NCAA president Charlie Baker said the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments are “growing more unlikely” to expand for the upcoming season, per Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger. There have been discussions about the field moving from 68 teams to 72 or 76 to increase television revenue for the NCAA, which has spent the last couple of years fighting costly lawsuits. There appear to be too many logistical challenges to increase the 2026 fields, although that could be in play for the 2027 tournaments. Baker told ESPN’s “it’s a lot of airplanes in a very short period of time” in terms of expanding the tournaments this season. Nevada’s Steve Alford is in favor of tournament expansion, as we reported last month.
3. Ex-Nevada volleyball player signs with Ohio State
Former Nevada volleyball player Sydney Wyman {a href=”{<}{>}blockquote class=” target=”_blank”}. Wyman was a middle blocker for Nevada in 2021, playing in all 29 matches of her freshman season. The Auberry, Calif., native then transferred to Morehead State where he played the last three seasons, earning All-Ohio Valley League honors in 2022, missing the 2023 campaign due to injury and rebounding last season by leading the team with 119 blocks while adding 209 kills. Wyman moves to the Big Ten for her final college season, joining an Ohio State team coming of a 14-16 record, including a 7-13 league mark.