This article originally appeared in the April 8, 1991 issue of Sporting News.
They were the best basketball team to come along in years, an immensely talented, wonderfully coached, highly entertaining squad that flirted with history and was rejected. But when the Rebels of Nevada-Las Vegas lost Saturday in the NCAA Final Four, America did not weep for either the players or their coach, Jerry Tarkanian. Maybe the athletes had earned another shot at a national title, but the program certainly didn't deserve it. The NCAA should never have allowed the Rebels to defend their 1990 championship; it was justice of sorts that Duke prevented them from winning another.
And the way they lost it was one of those inexplicable events that make sports so special. How could a team with so much ability and with so much at stake play the most important game of its season with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for an intrasquad scrimmage? That question will haunt Tarkanian the rest of his coaching career.
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His Nevada-Las Vegas Rebels blew it by failing to be serious enough about the task of brushing aside Duke. UNLV tried to get by on the basis of reputation, not effort. For Tarkanian that's the worst sin of all.
Tark knew he was in trouble after the first five minutes of the game. Instead of coming out and trying to overpower Duke with their tenacious pressure defense, the Rebels were lethargic and a half-step slow. Instead of destroying the confidence of a weaker foe, they allowed Duke to convince itself that maybe this Vegas club wasn't so good after all. Once that UNLV aura of superiority was erased in those fragile opening minutes, the Rebels' psychological edge was gone. Two years of work eliminated by one lackadaisical start.
On the other bench, Mike Krzyzewski knew what Tarkanian was experiencing. In a game earlier in the season at Virginia, Duke came out full of itself and was blown away by 17 points. "We played like it was our birthright to win, that God said, 'Of course, you should win; you are Duke,'" says Krzyzewski, who was so angered by his players' arrogance that he put them through an excruciating practice as soon as they returned home. The Blue Devils' season immediately got better.
UNLV's season ended abruptly because Tarkanian didn't have time to wake up his athletes, who knew they were playing a team they had beaten by 30 points in the championship game the previous year. How do you respect an opponent that much inferior to you? Vegas performed as if it was predestined to win another national title. It became a painful mistake.
This is not the first time the Final Four has witnessed such miscalculation. In a 1974 semifinal game, a more talented UCLA team lost in two overtimes to North Carolina State when Bruins coach John Wooden couldn't convince either center Bill Walton or guard Greg Lee that the Wolfpack was good enough to win with stars like David Thompson and Tom Burleson. Wooden later said it was the most frustrating time of his illustrious coaching career; he would yell instructions and his Bruins would simply ignore him.
For Tarkanian, the game became a nightmare. "I've never had a team play so well for so long and then come to the big game and let it get away," he says. "For the first five or six minutes, they were not in the game. I don't know where they were."
For all his coaching abilities, Tarkanian lost this game before it even started. Kryzyskewi preached the classic underdog mentality: they don't respect us, they are going to take us lightly, don't back down. His players listened. Tarkanian's didn't when he told them Duke was improved over 1990. Their minds clicked off. Isn't everyone handing us this title anyway? We show up, we win, we go home. It's that simple. But it wasn't.
Instead, the Rebels' place in history has changed dramatically. They had been called the best ever. Now, they will be associated with one of the four or five most stunning tournament upsets of all time.
But sympathy for UNLV? It won't happen. This is a renegade program run by a man who has flaunted his disregard for both the NCAA and its rules. The fact that Tarkanian says he will return next year as coach should be considered awful news by a school administration that has allowed him to establish an out-of-control kingdom in which he has far too much power and far too much influence.
This is a man who is convinced he has done nothing wrong, whose concept of a student-athlete is all askew, who provides fodder for every critic of college sports. Vegas is a prime example of a program without proper direction and out of tune with the standards college athletics should be adopting today.
UNLV needs to do some basketball housekeeping. What better time to start than now?
Paul Attner was a Senior Writer for Sporting News.