1989-90

NATIONAL SCENE:

The Shark, the Bank, and Jimmy V. headlined the year in college basketball. The Shark, a.k.a., Jerry Tarkanian led his UNLV Runnin' Rebels to a national championship, blowing out Duke by 30 points in the NCAA final. The Rebs shook off rumors and innuendos of NCAA improprieties during the course of season and became the first team ranked #1 in the preseason to go on to win the title since North Carolina did it in 1982.

The sudden tragic death of Loyola-Marymount star forward Hank “The Bank” Gathers from a heart malfunction inspired his teammates to make a run to the Final Eight. Led by star guard and Gathers' boyhood friend, Bo Kimble, who honored Gather's memory by taking his foul shots left-handed, the Lions, an 11-seed, roared past Michigan, the defending national champions with a tournament record 149 points, then edged Alabama by just two points before losing to the school of the Shark in the Regional Finals.

In all, nine of the top sixteen seeds lost in the first two rounds, with sixteen of the 48 first and second round games decided by the last shot or in overtime.  Maybe it was all the action, excitement, and unpredictability at the beginning that persuaded CBS to plunk down a cool billion for the rights to televise the whole shebang for the next seven years, instead of just bidding on the Final Four, as the networks had done in the past.

ALL-AMERICANS:                   SCORING AND REBOUNDING LEADERS:

Second Team

·         Rumeal Robinson, Michigan

·         Doug Smith, Missouri

·         Alonzo Mourning, Georgetown

·         Dennis Scott, Georgia Tech

·         Bo Kimble, Loyola-Marymount

• Kendall Gill, Illinois

FINAL POLLS:

Final AP Top 20

Writers' poll taken before tournament.

NCAA TOURNAMENT:

All-NCAA Tournament Team

Notes

• Vanderbilt def. St. Louis for the NIT title.

• Oregon State's Gary Payton scored a national-high 58 points in overtime vs. Southern Cal.

• Cleveland State, Kentucky, and North Carolina State were on NCAA probation.

• Tragically, Loyola-Marymount's Hank Gathers collapsed on court during the West Coast Conference tournament. He later died.

HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES

1990
David Bing, Player
Elvin E. Hayes, Player
*Donald Neil Johnston, Player
Vernon Earl Monroe, Player

UNLV takes Tark to the top

Duke didn't have the Vegas idea what was happening.

This one was the "Gunfight at the Coach K" corral. This one was the ambush by the Guns from Glitter Gulch. This one was for every card shark, saloon gal, rustler, hustler and homesteader who ever has set foot inside the sandy city limits of Las Vegas, the little settlement where the Mormons built a fort in the 1850s to teach agriculture to the Indians.

What else has your average Las Vegas resident had to rejoice over that was any wilder or more wonderful than the 103-73 destruction of Duke in college basketball's national championship game?

No Super Bowl, World Series, NBA, NHL title or any other kind of crown ever will come Nevada's way other than the NCAA, which has never been much of a friend to Nevada-Las Vegas.

"Was this sweet revenge?" Jerry Tarkanian, Nevada-Las Vegas' embattled coach, was asked.

"It wasn't revenge," a smiling Tarkanian said, "but it was sweet." Oh, Tark the Shark has such teeth, babe, and he showed those pearly whites.

His team won the title game by 30 points. Nobody ever had won the title game by 30 points. From Super Bowl Sunday on, Tark's players won 21 of their last 22 games. They never lost to anybody who didn't qualify for the NCAA Tournament.

How these guys nearly got knocked off by Ball State, we'll never know.

They won this one for Valerie Pida, their "honorary coach," the cheerleader from the 1987 Final Four team who still cheers them on from courtside, after having spent the past three years recovering from a bone marrow transplant.

They won this one for Bryan Emerzian, the little walk-on from Waukegan, Ill., who played only 15 minutes all season, but always will treasure the "People's Choice" award he was voted by the Rebels' fans - a bronzed gym shoe.

They won this one with a melting pot of marvels from Pasadena, Calif., (Stacey Augmon) to Brooklyn, N.Y., (Moses Scurry), from Detroit (Anderson Hunt) to Dallas (Larry Johnson), from Washington (David Butler) to Santa Clara, Calif., (Stacey Cvijanovich), as appropriate a roster as ever befit a city that thrives on tourism.

For hometown flavor, there was Greg Anthony, the junior from Las Vegas who wants to grow up to become the junior U.S. senator from Nevada. And, just in case anybody still wonders whether Nevada-Las Vegas attracts any genuine student-athletes, that guy wearing uniform No. 13 and playing nine minutes against those eggheads from Duke was Travis Bice, whose grade-point average is above 3.0.

Somehow, the Rebels knew well in advance that their big year was here. Maybe they had a premonition. Maybe they got their fortunes told. Or maybe they just figured it was about time that something nice happened to Nevada-Las Vegas, a school and a basketball team that developed a devoted following that included Frank Sinatra, Wayne Newton and Telly Savalas, but couldn't seem to convince numerous others that they were good for much of anything other than entertainment.

Tarkanian, the coach whose winning percentage ranks second to no active coach, took considerable exception to the idea that Nevada-Las Vegas did not offer quality education.

"Everybody thinks our students major in Cocktail Waitressing 101," he said.

It was the Duke students who got an education. For as much trouble as these distinguished scholars gave them, the Rebels might as well have been playing the Dead Poets Society.

You knew these dizzy Devils were in for a long evening when sophomore Brian Davis tried to high-five classmate Christian Laettner after a basket and ended up poking him in the eye. Duke didn't get much chance to practice giving five.

"That's the best any team has played against us - ever," said Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski.

Poor old Coach K wasn't around in 1964, when UCLA stuffed 98 points down Duke's throats in the NCAA final, but now he knows how it feels to surrender more points than any team in the history of the title game. It feels like needing a seven or an 11 and rolling craps.

Nobody could get a bet down on Nevada-Las Vegas in the old hometown, which saved the bookmakers a lot of money. Out of loyalty alone, gamblers undoubtedly would have plopped a few thousand on the Rebels, not even suspecting that they would be wagering on one of the most dynamic college basketball teams ever to dunk a Rawlings.

The big year was here, all right, and next year might be just as big.

Tarkanian has a recruit headed east from Oxnard, Calif., Shon Tarver, who figures to make noise, and another recruit from Clark High School in Las Vegas with the wonderfully memorable handle of H. Waldman, who no doubt will gain fame as "H. Bomb" or "H. Factor" or something equally graphic. (H's number will be 2-0.)

Asked what the Rebels can do for an encore, Larry Johnson, who's only a junior, asked a question right back: "Win it again?" He was still in the locker room when most of his teammates were gone.

Somebody nagged him to hurry up. "Hey!" Johnson said. "I just won a national championship, and you're telling me to hurry up?"

"OK, walk back to the hotel, then," he was told.

"OK, I'm turning pro," Johnson said.

He might, and he might not, but he could. Most of these guys could. The 1989-90 basketball team from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas was so good that it could have taken on any organization or league that begins with an "N."