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 aims for second MW Tournament semifinal under Alford
The Nevada men’s basketball team avoided an upset in its first-round MW Tournament game Wednesday with an 86-71 win over Fresno State. Now, the Wolf Pack aims to score an upset. No. 7 Nevada plays No. 2 Colorado State at 6 p.m. Thursday with a spot in the tournament’s semifinals on the line. The Wolf Pack has made the semifinal just once in coach Steve Alford’s first five seasons, that coming in 2021 when the Wolf Pack lost to SDSU. Nevada needs to win this year’s tournament to make the Big Dance, putting it three wins away from the MW’s automatic berth. The Wolf Pack was swept during the regular season by Colorado State, which enters the postseason on a seven-game win streak with an outside shot of getting an NCAA Tournament at-large berth. That would require at least two wins at this week’s tournament. The Rams are a 5.5-point favorite against Nevada, which is down to eight healthy scholarship players. Here are my three keys to victory and a prediction.
2. Nevada’s Bailey Heydra finishes one spot shy of NCAA berth
Nevada diver Bailey Heydra finished one spot shy of automatic qualification at the NCAA Championships in the 1-meter springboard Wednesday at the Zone E Diving Championships. The Mountain West champion in the event, Heydra finished ninth at zone, pushed out of the eighth spot by UCLA’s Molly Brascia on the second-to-last dive of the competition. Heydra was 4.30 points shy of making the NCAAs as the top-eight divers at zone qualify for the national championship. Heydra also narrowly missed qualifying in the 3-meter drive, finishing in 12th. Barring an injury pushing Heydra into the field, the Wolf Pack will not have a representative at the NCAA swimming and diving championships. Swimmer Scarlett Ferris qualified for the NCAAs in three events but has been scratched with an illness.
3. Wolf Pack alum Daiyan Henley gets $900,000 bonus
Former Nevada football player Daiyan Henley got a bonus of $892,651 through the NFL’s performance-based pay for the 2024 season. That pot of money generally rewards younger players, guys with high productivity but low salaries. In total, NFL players got more than $452 million in performance-based pay in 2024 with Henley getting the 12th-biggest payout (Jets linebacker Jamien Sherwood was first with a $1,092,206 bonus). The Athletic has a list of the top-25 earners. Henley was a second-year player for the Los Angeles Chargers this season and had 147 tackles, ranking eighth in the NFL. That was the most tackles for a Nevada alum in the NFL. Given Henley made just $996,383 last season as part of his rookie deal, he nearly doubled his income via the performance-based pay bonus.
