GLENDALE, Ariz. — Thirty minutes before Friday’s first-round NAIA national tournament game, Jordan Mast discussed the scouting report one final time. The University of Antelope Valley coach went through the opposition’s starters. He detailed keys to victory.

Mast, 37, paused. Written on the whiteboard behind him in green marker were five words: Who do you play for?

Over the past several weeks, this has been a complex question for Antelope Valley, a private, four-year, for-profit school with an undergraduate enrollment of around 500 in Lancaster, Calif. On March 8, the university closed its campus amid financial strain and lawsuits. There’s no plan for it to reopen, which has produced an avalanche of uncertainty.

Antelope Valley’s six seniors will not graduate as planned, at least not at the school that graces their jerseys. The Pioneers’ younger players will not return. The coaching staff, like the rest of the university faculty, will be unemployed. About an hour before tip-off Friday at the Arizona Christian University Events Center, Mast checked his phone to see if his reduced paycheck had come through. It had not.

“School pride?” senior guard Christian Taylor said with a chuckle. “I have basketball team pride. Pioneer pride. You can’t take that away.”

“Win or go home” is a common rallying cry this time of year. In Antelope Valley’s case, it literally means win or go home. Not back to campus, but back to hometowns, back to a harsh reality. Since Antelope Valley shut down, the university dorm has stayed open, but only until the men’s and women’s basketball teams finish their seasons.

Just to get to this point, Mast and others raised $49,000 through a GoFundMe for his team, and the women’s basketball team, which also made the national tournament. Since the NAIA has rules prohibiting unenrolled students from participating in athletics, the California Pacific Conference, of which Antelope Valley was a member, worked with the NAIA to make an exception.

UAV coach Jordan Mast before Friday’s game. pic.twitter.com/tkF9FipbFB

— Doug Haller (@DougHaller) March 16, 2024

The sixth-seeded Pioneers (26-4) matched up against 11th-seed Huntington (Ind.) in the Duer Quadrant. Despite the adversity, Mast’s team had closed the season remarkably well, winners of 10 in a row. But the situation had produced hardships. As the Pioneers finished practice Thursday, the University of Saint Katherine Firebirds, a team from the same conference, pulled up to the Arizona Christian gym in a bus.

Mast and his team headed to four vehicles spread throughout the parking lot. Instead of renting a bus, the Pioneers spent $1,000 on an eight-passenger van and split the rest of their 18-person party among three cars. “I’m having players drive,” said Mast, who drove from Southern California as well. “Stuff you don’t want to be doing.”

Instead of a hotel, the team rented an Airbnb for $6,000 for four nights. (Baseball spring training had made hotel rates too expensive in the Phoenix area.) Not everybody has a room, assistant coach Miles Nolen-Webb said, but everybody has a bed.

Inside the cramped locker room, Mast read the five words. “Who do you play for?”

A former walk-on at Gonzaga, the coach wore gray pants and a light blue button-down with a dark tie. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. Mast talked in a booming voice, one that could be heard outside.

“Every practice, every game, every time we had a meeting, every time we had individual (workouts), it has led you here, to now being a true team,” he said.

He told the Pioneers to play for each other. To play for family. To play for the strangers who donated. Without them, there would be no national tournament.

“When everybody else said, ‘Your season is over. This cannot happen,’ other people, people you don’t know, stepped up and said, ‘No,’” Mast said. “You know what? We’re still here. We’re not done. We’re going to keep this ride going.

“That’s who you play for tonight.”

Don Ott is commissioner of the California Pacific Conference. In 1990, he worked for the West Coast Conference and was in the building the night Loyola Marymount star Hank Gathers collapsed and died on the basketball court.

That spring, Ott traveled with Loyola Marymount throughout the NCAA Tournament. During a recent phone conversation, Ott recalled Bo Kimble shooting a free throw left-handed to honor Gathers. Thirty-four years later, Ott’s voice still cracks when telling the story.

“That’s not something I’d want to go back through, it was really hard,” he said. “It felt really good for them to play basketball again — and it will be (for Antelope Valley) when these guys show up for nationals. It’s not the same, but it’s a similar kind of story.”

Retired firefighter and paramedic Marco Johnson and wife Sandra founded the University of Antelope Valley in 1997. It was a medical school to start, specializing in first-aid training. Years later, the Johnsons purchased the Antelope Valley Inn along Sierra Highway and turned it into a seven-acre college campus. They gutted the hotel, repurposing it into lecture halls, labs and dorm rooms.

In 2009, the school received the proper accreditation and began issuing associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Andre Harrell, the school’s sports information director, said students generally attended Antelope Valley to become a firefighter or EMT, a chef or sports agent. A great many, he said, enrolled to play sports. In addition to men’s and women’s basketball, the school also offered men’s and women’s soccer, women’s volleyball, baseball, softball and for a spell, cross country.

The men’s basketball program had a strong reputation, mostly because of Mast. While sitting on the bench at Gonzaga, he absorbed as much as possible from coach Mark Few and then-assistants Tommy Lloyd (now the head coach at Arizona) and Leon Rice (head coach at Boise State).

Instead of complaining about playing time, Mast studied offensive sets and analyzed defensive schemes.

Once he started coaching, his energy stood out. Mast is the type who runs drills and scrimmages with his team. At Antelope Valley, the inside joke is that the program’s best player is the one who calls the plays.

“He’s just an overall good guy,” senior guard Michael Hayes said. “And he’s a good coach. He pushes you to the limit. He knows that the only thing that can stop us is us, and he just pushes us to the max every single day. He never lets us take a day off. Yeah, I love him.”

On July 7, 2022, the Johnsons sold Antelope Valley to Genius Group, a technology corporation based in Singapore. In an interview, Marco Johnson said he and his wife had run the university for 20-plus years and they felt it was time to “take the institution global.” Genius Group, he said, appeared to have the reach to do so.

As part of the deal, the Johnsons retained ownership of the campus and the basketball facility, leasing both to Genius Group. Coaches and staff expected the new owners to invest millions into the school’s campus and athletic facilities. Instead, they say they reduced scholarship money.

It got worse.

According to The Antelope Valley Press, the Johnsons last year filed two unlawful detainer complaints for damages, possession of the premises and forfeiture of the lease agreements after Genius Group failed to pay rent.

The University of Antelope Valley Inc. countersued, the Antelope Valley Press reported, for nine complaints, including breach of contract, fraud-deceit and intentional misrepresentation. In a statement, Antelope’s new ownership blamed the Johnsons for ignoring much-needed repairs — more than 400 — to campus facilities.

“Nonsense,” Johnson said.

Roger Hamilton, founder of Genius Group, could not be reached for comment.

In late February, Mast said he and others were told on a video call with university officials that the school did not have money to cover payroll. Mast said they were told their next paychecks would be 25 percent salary and 75 percent Genius Group stock. He also learned that the school could not fund the rest of the basketball season.

On Feb. 22, Mast posted a GoFundMe link on his Instagram page.

“As fortunate as I have been to coach championship teams and be a part of 5 conference championships at UAV, the real reason I coach is for the relationships with my players,” Mast wrote. “I owe it to them to do everything in my power to try and raise the funds necessary to let them finish their season the way they deserve.”

The post drew national attention. It saved the basketball season, but not the school.

In Friday’s first half, Antelope Valley and Huntington battled to a 29-29 tie. In the second, the Foresters took control. They handled Antelope Valley’s trademark pressure and found good shots, hitting 70 percent for most of the second half.

The Pioneers never recovered. They lost 85-71.

In the locker room, Mast stood in front of his team. All around him, he saw players who had overcome adversity. As a child, Hayes, the conference player of the year, had been homeless for a couple of months, sleeping with siblings on park bleachers.

With the Pioneers’ season over, the team is turning to what’s next. (Doug Haller / The Athletic)

Guard Arik Nicholas had come to Antelope Valley from Belize to chase the basketball dream. Guard Alyion Stubbs had worked in an Amazon warehouse, out of basketball for two years, when Mast contacted him about playing. He called Antelope Valley the biggest blessing of his life.

Since the closing announcement, Mast had looked at this as a four-quarter basketball game. The first quarter was getting through senior night, which the Pioneers did. The second was getting through the conference tournament, which the Pioneers won. The third was raising money and getting to the national tournament. Check.

The fourth was helping players move on.

Suddenly, that time was here.

“I’ll end it with this,” Mast said to his team. “The season may be over, but we don’t stop. You’ve got to know our staff — we’re going to do everything we can for you guys to place you into good programs. For you seniors, we’ll find a spot for you to finish your degree. It’s not goodbye because the season is over. When we say ‘family,’ that means something.

“Love you guys.”

 (Top photo: David Brandt / Associated Press)