NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Cody and Caleb Martin grew up in a trailer park in Mocksville, a wisp of a North Carolina town. Their mother worked multiple jobs to keep the family afloat. And when the family needed help scraping by when the Martin twins were juniors in high school, they took part-time jobs at Walmart. They pushed shopping carts around the lot and developed a keen appreciation for blue-collar work while wearing the store’s trademark blue vests.
The experience wasn’t exactly warm and fuzzy for the brothers. They’d patrol the paint for Davie County High School on Friday nights and then spend their Saturdays traversing the parking lot.
“Especially when it’s the only one in your county, and everyone knows you,” Caleb Martin said. “It’s a small town but it was definitely a humbling experience and we tried to do whatever we had to do just to get by, be it [help] with bills, gas money and food.”
Everyone from this Nevada Wolfpack team has come a long way. Their coach, Eric Musselman, has a résumé that reads like a bowl of minor league alphabet soup – CBA, USBL, NBADL – as well as being fired in the NBA. All five starters are transfers, including the Martin twins who left N.C. State two years ago after feeling too tethered by Mark Gottfried’s offense there.
On Friday afternoon, amid the fantastic flourish of No. 7 Nevada’s 87-83 overtime victory over No. 10 Texas, everything came together for the Wolf Pack – the far-flung journeys, the vagabond lifer coach and a roster so depleted that Nevada played six players in an overtime game.
When the buzzer sounded, Musselman – all 5-foot-6 of him – leapt in the air into the arms of assistant coach Johnnie Jones. He looked like a walk-on celebrating a last-minute basket as much as a lifer rejoicing after a 14-point comeback, the sheer joy showing how much work, toil and buy-in had gone into the moment.
“I just thought that, they’re just a different team,” Musselman said. “We have no size and playing six guys in an overtime game. It’s hard to win a game in the tournament. I couldn’t be prouder of our guys.”
Nevada is a program that has got to this point, and may be limited by, a defiant philosophy that bolsters and limits its roster. When Musselman got the job in 2015, he decided to build primarily through transfers. Nevada assistant Anthony Ruta explained that in order to be consistently competitive, the coaches felt as if they’d need to plunder the transfer market.
The strategy has worked resplendently, as Nevada has won 80 games in three seasons. But it hasn’t been easy.
Nevada has four more transfers sitting out who’ll be eligible next season. And because of that, the Wolf Pack cap out at nine scholarship players. Injuries have hindered them to the point they needed to add two football players and a walk-on who’d quit. Nothing showed the inexperience more than Musselman’s fiery pregame speech being interrupted by one of the football player’s cell phones ringing in the locker room before the game.
“Everyone heard it and I had to chuckle,” Musselman told Yahoo Sports after the game. “We got a guy on the football team, he doesn’t know.”
Musselman wanted a roster that fits his over-caffeinated mold, as he starts his days pre-dawn and drinks Bai, Vitamin Water Zeros and Diet Coke to keep up his energy.
“He doesn’t drink coffee, which is surprising,” Ruta said. “I have to drink two pots a day to keep up with him.”
Cody and Caleb have clicked with Musselman because he promised them a free-flowing style of play where they could launch shots and not look over their shoulders. Musselman wanted players who held grudges, the overlooked and underappreciated who would appreciate a clean slate in a second act.
“How do we find as much toughness and people with chips on their shoulders?” he said of his recruiting philosophy. “That was really, really important for us. Cody and Caleb have chips on their shoulders. This group just clicks. They get me, and I get them.”
They teamed up with Hallice Cooke (Oregon State and Iowa State), Kendall Stephens (Purdue) and Jordan Caroline (Southern Illinois) to deliver the Wolf Pack their first postseason victory since 2007. They scored only 26 points in the first half, watched future top-five pick Mo Bamba grab 14 rebounds and still found a way to grit out a victory. Caleb Martin went apoplectic in overtime, hitting all three of his 3-pointers after starting the game 1 for 9 from deep. Nevada’s 19 points in overtime nearly matched its first-half output.
It marked the culmination of a long journey for the Martins, a rag-tag roster and an itinerant coach.
“It always feels good to make history, not only with my brother, but with my brothers,” Cody Martin said. We’re excited, but we’re not done yet.”
They’ve all come a long way, so there’s no reason to stop now. Cody Martin said he looked out in the stands and saw his mom and brother and thought about watching the tournament growing up, and being a bit in awe that they were really here. He thought about chipping in to get here, the odd job at Walmart and the long odds that have ended with them in Reno, hitting a basketball jackpot.
The tougher the journey, the richer the awards are upon arrival. And as Nevada survived and advanced, Caleb Martin could only smile at all the opportunities. Even the ones that require a blue vest.
“We were fortunate to get that job,” Caleb Martin said. “We just pushed carts day and night.”
He paused and summed up this opportunistic Wolf Pack team: “We took that and ran with it.”
More March Madness coverage from Yahoo Sports:
• After upset of Arizona, Obama gets called out
• Texas Tech’s ferocious 360 alley-oop dunk was just silly
• Rob Gray will never buy a drink in Houston again
• What’s standing between Sooners prospect and the NBA? His dad
