By Rocco Miller
The best five-year period of UC Riverside Basketball in its 25-year history as a D1 member is now in the rearview mirror. The Highlanders have achieved unprecedented success since 2020 under the guidance of Mike Magpayo, who went 89-63 overall and had a 53-32 Big West record. Magpayo, of course, accepted the well-deserved move up the coaching ranks to Fordham University back on March 30th.
The man who hired Magpayo, Wesley Mallette (UCR’s Athletics Director), was left with the brutal responsibility to decide who would succeed UCR’s most successful coach in its D1 history.
The program is now in the crosshairs of building on a lot of success and potentially losing all campus funding (again) as it seeks its next head coach. Sources have indicated that the school has heavy concerns about changing funds for the UC system within the current fiscal year. More on that later.
Trusted industry sources have informed The Bracketeer that this coaching search has been trimmed down to four candidates out of a pool of over 200 people who reached out to UCR with interest. After all, the Big West Conference is coming off of its best season in 20 years as a league, and the league is expanding next year by adding UCR’s crosstown rivals, California Baptist.
The state of affairs at UC Riverside is anything but normal. Despite all of the Men’s Basketball success, and other athletic turnarounds at the school with Women’s Basketball and recently Softball as easy examples, the department and upper campus are facing financial pitfalls once again.
To refresh your memory, UC Riverside’s 2020-21 season was played with a surplus of uncertainty. UCR navigated the COVID pandemic to somehow pull off a 22-game basketball schedule (rarely high in the UC system that year with the restrictions), going on to a 14-8 record, which included landmark wins over Washington and Top-60 ranked UC Santa Barbara (eventual 12-seed in the NCAAT). The school’s athletic department was going through its depths of stress as well.
In August 2020, the athletic programs at UCR came into question when university officials listed the elimination of all sports as a possibility.
HC Mike Magpayo said at the time, “I just can’t imagine a relevant university without athletics, so I’ve got to put a lot of faith that it’s going to get done and be fine. I don’t know, though.”
AD Wesley Mallette’s thoughts during that early time of pressure to cut athletics were, “Your true value in any organization is how quickly you can get to a solution and a solution that works for people in a positive way. Learning those lessons in corporate America is so valuable because when you move into the world of college sports, you have to apply those principles to create more efficient operations within your organization.”
Overcoming incredible obstacles, Mike Magpayo and UC Riverside Men’s Basketball worked its way out of a near-impossible scenario beginning with the 2020-21 season.
Five years later, AD Wesley Mallette is forced to make another difficult decision. The question that many industry sources have repeated back to me is, how much say will Mallette have in the final decision?
It is a valid question when you review the finalists.
THE FINALISTS
Gus Argenal, Current Head Coach at Cal State San Bernardino - Gus is right there in Riverside’s sister city of San Bernardino. Argenal’s name likely sounds familiar because he had great success as one of Eric Musselman’s trusted assistants at both Arkansas and Nevada. During that period, Argenal was a key part of seven NCAA Tournament teams, reaching the 2022 Elite Eight with the Razorbacks and two Sweet 16s. He has spent the past two years at CSUSB, guiding the D2 Coyotes to an impressive run back to the D2 Final Four in 2023-24 in his first season. An amazing achievement on the heels of Andy Newman leaving for Cal State Northridge the year prior, which left Argenal the tall task of reloading the roster.. Argenal continued his success at CSUSB by getting back to the 2025 D2 NCAAT, before exiting in the Round of 32.
Justin Downer, Current Head Coach at Point Loma Nazarene - Justin is the next in a great run of head coaches coming from the uber-successful PLNU program. He guided the Sea Lions to a PacWest Title (15-5) in his first season as Head Coach in 2023-24. This season, he led them to even higher heights, with an 18-2 PacWest record, and a trip to the Regional Final in the D2 NCAA Tournament.
Skye Ettin, UC Santa Barbara Assistant Coach - Ettin has been a promising young phenom in the industry for a while now. He has spent the past two seasons at UC Santa Barbara and understands the landscape of the much-improved Big West. Before that, Ettin was a key member of Princeton’s coaching staff, and the Tigers had a superb 82-29 Ivy League record during his six years there. Ettin was named one of the Silver Waves Media Rising Stars in the coaching industry during Final Four Week.
Byron Scott, NBA Legend and former L.A. Lakers Head Coach - The wildcard selection belongs with Mr. Scott. Byron is a finalist for the primary reason of fundraising, according to sources. He last coached a team in 2016, a historically rough time for the Lakers, and has not coached since. Which certainly makes the concept of hiring Byron at UCR a bit berserk. Byron’s reputation as an LA community member and well-liked figure in Los Angeles is very strong. And the opportunity to bring money to UCR’s futile athletics problems has him still firmly in the mix to get hired here. One additional problem may be that Los Angeles proper and the Inland Empire, where UC Riverside is located, are very different places and demographics. Yes, everyone loves the Lakers, but Riverside has a separate culture, and it’s not exactly close to downtown LA. Uncertainty persists if Scott’s presence at UCR would move any needles for the program.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Perhaps the most vital element of this hire is what is happening as it pertains to funding for athletics stemming from the powers that be within UC Riverside campus leadership. At the end of this process, funding for athletics might be the most important factor. Potential near-term changes within Athletics funding once again could be an issue in UC Riverside’s future.
The hard work that has gone into this program and the consistent level of recent program success would prefer no part of that previous paragraph. The D1 College basketball business and recent instant Big West winning stories at Cal State Northridge under Andy Newman and Cal Poly’s Mike DeGeorge further suggest that a coach from the D2 ranks makes a lot of sense for UC Riverside to continue winning at a successful rate by delpoying a similar decisioning model during this hiring cycle that its peers CSUN and Cal Poly did.
Mallette’s track record, especially when looking at all sports in addition to hiring and extending Magpayo, suggests that he will lean toward a program builder and a hard worker. I believe both of the D2 candidates (Argenal and Downer) and Ettin fit the model and are in an ideal spot career-wise to take this natural next step to lead the Highlanders. All three are equally as hungry to accept the position, from what I can tell.
On March 14, the Department of Education announced investigations into more than 50 universities over race-based admissions and scholarship programs. Days before, it sent letters to more than 60 institutions warning them about enforcement actions. The UC schools are expected to be a part of this issue, even if they are not the main focus. The frustrating element is that it is out of Athletics’ control.
A new Head Coach announcement could come as early as Tuesday, per sources. In one of the more interesting searches of the 2025 carousel, it will be important to remember the circumstances at UC Riverside before hiring judgments are made, especially if Byron Scott is the eventual choice. One could surmise, Scott gives UCR the best chance to raise money for athletics and generate fundraising avenues to support and ideally stabilize UCR athletics. One could also surmise, this idea of hiring a former NBA man from the distant past is only a band-aid solution - What about wins and losses?
We will have answers soon, I believe.
