What happened to Mike Hamrick in Las Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas. It stayed with him.

One particular memory from his six years as UNLV’s athletic director — at the nexus of sports and gambling in the United States, with a sportsbook across the street from the football team’s practice facility — resurfaced recently. It was the first men’s basketball game of Hamrick’s tenure there in 2003, and a UNLV walk-on passed up a wide-open layup in the closing seconds and instead dribbled out the clock in a double-digit win. Some fans near the court started booing.

“We just won a big basketball game by 11 points, and our fans aren’t happy that we didn’t win by more points?” Hamrick recalled asking his wife. A fan seated beside him explained, “No, that’s not why fans are upset. They’re upset because the point spread was 12, and we didn’t cover.”