Hill: Deadly Las Vegas fire hits close to home for ex-UNLV coach

Former UNLV basketball coach Todd Simon will never forget receiving that awful phone call as tragedy struck his Bowling Green program last month.

Freshman guard Alijah Adem had lost four family members in an early-morning house fire.

It’s a story that has been well-documented in Las Vegas, where Adem starred on the basketball court at Spring Valley. Adem’s father, uncle and two siblings died in the blaze.

Simon’s immediate reaction was to comfort Adem and organize a flight for the player and an assistant coach to get to Las Vegas as soon as possible.

‘Coach Abdul’

But Simon was also hurting. He’s always been known as a relationship-builder as a top recruiter, and he had grown particularly close with Adem’s father since meeting him four years ago at the beginning of the recruiting process.

Abdusalem Adem, affectionately known simply as “Coach Abdul” by those close to him, loved basketball and coached youths in the sport for nearly two decades. He eventually started an AAU program that featured Alijah.

Simon and “Coach Abdul” bonded immediately. Simon loves coaches and those with a passion for basketball, but there was far more to their connection. It was Adem’s outlook on life that truly attracted Simon.

“I’ve known Abdul since Alijah’s sophomore year of high school,” Simon told the Review-Journal. “He was such a believer in the growth mindset and positive energy that we connected immediately. I’ll never forget how our conversations made me feel because they would always put me in a better place.”

It has been a couple of weeks, and the healing process is really just beginning for not only Alijah Adem and his family, but also the rest of the Bowling Green players who got to know “Coach Abdul” when he was around this summer, sharing his positivity with his son’s teammates.

And he wasn’t the only one lost in the tragedy. Alijah Adam also lost his sisters Anaya (7) and Aaliyah (6) as well as his uncle Ibrahim in the fire.

Simon’s team has started 0-2, but that’s far from the most important thing at this point. It’s a team loaded with newcomers that was always expected to get better as the season progressed.

But now the focus is on coming together as a basketball family and learning about life while growing as a team, something Simon has always valued in his coaching career.

He just wishes it wasn’t forced on this group in such an overwhelming manner.

“It has just been so gut-wrenching personally and for our program,” Simon said. “Alijah is a beloved member of our team. Our hearts just go out to the family.”

Bowling Green will play in the Arizona Tip-Off in Phoenix later this month. UNLV is in the same event, but in a different bracket.

Unnecessary programming

Hopefully you’re all enjoying the College Football Playoff selection show each Tuesday for what it truly is.

A completely useless and meaningless television show.

It was already silly to do these weekly releases when it was only four teams.

Now that the CFP is a 12-team field, it’s worse.

Not that the playoff is a bad idea. It has the potential to be the best sporting event in the world each year and is long overdue.

But the weekly show is so pointless.

First of all, the committee is going to make a final decision after all of the games are played with no regard for how the weekly rankings play out. How do we know that? Because it happened all the time, even with the four-team field. Team A ahead of Team B for six straight weeks, both win their final games, yet Team B leapfrogs Team A.

The weekly show is simply to generate interest in the next week’s games and will have little to no relevance to the final matchups, which will also be manipulated for TV.

So stop watching it and just tune in when the games start. They will be far better than this weekly spectacle.

Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on X.