On November 29, 1990, Jerry Tarkanianwho was already in Canada for the teams opening gamereceived a phone call from UNLV President Robert Maxon. "I think it's the best a team has ever played against me," Krzyzewski said afterward. Day responded with a feeble, flailing punch of his own. A brutal sucker punch in the OVC tournament stopped the game in its tracks. H Waldman: Smart player with solid 3-point shot and quality passing. They were ranked No. Ill see you after the game, Johnson threatened as the referees pulled the players apart. It wasn't. The wins came one after another. Best NCAA Tournament Player: Was it Carmelo Anthony or Christian Laettner? The UNLV-UAB contest capped off a day of basketballa girls game at 12:15, a boys game at 2:15, a matchup between the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria at 4:30, and then finally UNLV. Laettner, Grant
The 1990-91 UNLV Runnin' Rebels basketball team represented the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in NCAA Division I men's competition in the 1990-91 season.The Runnin' Rebels, coached by Jerry Tarkanian, entered the season as defending national champions and entered the 1991 NCAA tournament unbeaten, but lost in the national semifinal to eventual champions Duke when Anderson Hunt's . The 1991 Rebels were the bad guys and they loved every minute of their role. You call winning a game by 2-points better? UNLV crushed Utah State, then had a party on the court with its fans Thursday to celebrate its back-to-back Mountain West regular-season championships. UNLV Rebels Men's. Roster and Stats. Since freshmen were not eligible at the time of UCLA's run, Duke's. This tournament marked the first time a #15 seed upset a #2 seed since the tournament field expanded to 64 teams in 1985, when Richmond accomplished against Syracuse in the East region. I just feel so happy and fortunate that we got here and were able to win it., Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski: We were overmatched. After blowout loss, UNLV refocuses for rivalry game with UNR, Lady Rebels rally to complete perfect run through Mountain West, Its been a blessing: UNLV honors seniors ahead of Utah State game, Layup in final seconds gives Rebels victory over Air Force, A privilege: Lady Rebels celebrate banner with fans after blowout, UNLV hopes practice pays off against Air Forces Princeton style, Lady Rebels want fans to help honor history with banner ceremony. UNLV shredded Duke with an 18-0 second-half run to leave no doubt as to which was the countrys finest team. First LJ (who wasnt called that yet) picked Vegas. Royce
Dembele, Justin
The use of software that blocks ads hinders our ability to serve you the content you came here to enjoy. We present them here for purely educational purposes. "As great a team as that UNLV team was, we were a pretty darn good team too," Grant Hill says. UNLV 77, Duke 79, Kentucky 103, Duke 104, Notre Dame 91, UConn 89, Texas A&M 63, Stanford 62. This tournament featured three play-in games before the tournament field was announced, featuring the champions of the six conferences with the lowest computer ratings the previous season. This year also saw the final appearance of the Pontiac Silverdome and two former Final Four venues, in Cole Field House and Freedom Hall. Do you have a sports website? . ", The Rebels negated coach Nolan Richardson's vaunted "40 minutes of hell" full-court press by repeatedly firing outlet passes to a streaking Anderson Hunt for still another fast-break dunk. Always winning. Larry Johnson had 22 points and 11 rebounds while Final Four Most Valuable Player Anderson Hunt scored 29 for a UNLV team that shot a sizzling 61 percent. The game was not televised. Huh? For the second time, Indianapolis was the host of the Final Four, this time at the Hoosier Dome, which would host the Final Four three more times. Stoeckinger. Kansas defeated Williams' mentor Dean Smith and North Carolina (where Williams later coached) in the semifinal. Not an undefeated squad to be found. Our reasoning for presenting offensive logos. UNLV had reason to be confident entering the 1991 national semifinal game. Learn more and register, College Basketball at Sports-Reference.com Blog and Articles. Drake and Bradley are the favorites in the MVC mens basketball conference tournament. During the UNLV golden age they won an impressive 45 games straight when you include their final 11 games of the 1990 championship season. Hes covered high school and UNLVs Anderson Hunt scores a basket as teammate Larry Johnson looks on during an NCAA Tournament first-round win over Montana on March 15,1991. "I've never watched the game in 30 years," he says. Director of Basketball Operations. The team had only trailed for 38 minutes during the entire campaign. "It still hurts. Twenty-five years later the question is still asked: How did Duke pull it off? [2] This was the first National Championship game for Williams as a head coach. 1988 Men's . Sara Doty. What else could he say? To understand just how different it was, consider the following four numbers. Duke, meanwhile, won the first of five National Championships (1991, 1992, 2001, 2010, 2015) two nights later. Coming off the 1989-1990 title season, UNLV got every teams absolute best shot the next year. "I was a fan of theirs," Grant Hill says. The SPORTS REFERENCE and STATHEAD trademarks are owned exclusively by Sports Reference LLC. We got these dudes because they are taking us lightly. Davis, Thomas
Larry Johnson shot 66% from the floor for the season. We ask that you consider turning off your ad blocker so we can deliver you the best experience possible while you are here. UAB did the best it could. "I don't think we were overconfident," he says. Daly, Torrence
Terms at draftkings.com/sportsbook. Still, those of us who grew up with Jerry Tarkanians Rebels will tell you, theres been no team better in the history of college basketball history than those 1990-1991 Runnin Rebels, even without a championship cherry on top. From there the gauntlet was thrown, but not before former UCLA ball player Bill Walton wrote in his 1978 book On the Road with the Portland Trail Blazers, UCLA players were so well taken care of far beyond the ground rules of the NCAA that even players from poor backgrounds never left UCLA prematurely (for pro basketball) during John Woodens championship years. Ast, Mike
Stacey Augmon, who had set off an impromptu autograph mob scene on the campus of UBC the night before, opened the game with a thunderous dunk. United States top collegiate-level basketball tournament for 1991, 1991 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, East Regional East Rutherford, New Jersey, Southeast Regional Charlotte, North Carolina, 1991 NCAA Basketball National Championship Game, NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, 1991 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournaments, Duke Blue Devils men's basketball 199091 NCAA champions, 1991 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, 1991 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship Game, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 1991 NCAA Division II men's basketball tournament, 1991 NCAA Division III men's basketball tournament, 1991 NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament, 1991 NCAA Division II women's basketball tournament, 1991 NCAA Division III women's basketball tournament, 1991 National Women's Invitation Tournament, 1991 NAIA Division I men's basketball tournament, 1991 NAIA Division I women's basketball tournament, "Florida Gulf Coast vs. Georgetown Game Recap March 22, 2013 ESPN", "College Basketball; Smith Ejected on 2 Technicals", "Fordham's road to NCAA blocked by St. Francis, 7064", "The longest winning streaks in college basketball history | NCAA.com", Sports Emmy Award for Outstanding Live Sports Series, 1988 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, 1990 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, 1992 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, TCA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Sports, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1991_NCAA_Division_I_men%27s_basketball_tournament&oldid=1136549342, 199091 NCAA Division I men's basketball season, Basketball competitions in Charlotte, North Carolina, March 1991 sports events in the United States, April 1991 sports events in the United States, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Bobby Dibler, David Bair, and Harrell Allen, This was Duke's fourth (of five) consecutive Final Four trip, the first team to achieve such a feat since UCLA. Let it burn into your cranium. Because many people forget or simply ignore the plain truth - LJ kicked everyone's ass on the court. 1983 Houston and 85 Georgetown were defeated by complete underdogs that many didnt even peg as final fours participants. Losing the most lopsided championship game in tournament history had battered Dukes psyche. Place in Vancouver, Canada on December 1, 1990. For the game, Fullerton nearly doubled its average attendance. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament. They played championship-caliber ball. Yet for my money, there was no greater team in college basketball than the one that came next, even if its final shot happened not to go through the hoop. The guy had the power of a post player with the shooting touch of a perimeter man. THIS WAS THE the first Final Four called by Jim Nantz for CBS, and his future broadcast partner, Grant Hill, was a freshman for the Blue Devils. (Editor's note: ESPN reached out to multiple starters from that team as well as to one member of the coaching staff. Who will win each 2023 conference tournament? Why Wooden changed his verbage is unknown, but Im sure some of it had to do with Jerry Tarkanian. . "I sure wish they'd given us a multiple-choice penalty," third-year Kansas coach Roy Williams said of the NCAA. 27-0. The 1990 UNLV Runnin' Rebels are regarded as one of the greatest college basketball teams of all time. With their black sneakers, anti-establishment attitude and gold fronts, Jerry Tarkanians Rebels embodied youth and hip hop culture2Pac rocked the schools gear in the"Brendas Got a Baby" videobefore the Fab Five even existed. We won some. Director of Basketball Operations. A fourth player, George Ackles, went . The Lions were making a storybook tournament run in the wake of the tragic death of Hank Gathers, but UNLV ended that story with an easy 131-101 victory. Have you ever felt as if youre in a washing machine on a super speed setting? "We were a little more focused and more mature," Thomas Hill says. Our reasoning for presenting offensive logos. Anthony was a confident player, tough as nails. 25 years later, UNLV players still feel the heartbreak of losing toDuke, The Clippers Russell Westbrook experiment is off to a terrible start. ESPN reported in January of 1990 that Augmon would reunite with his 1988 Olympic team coach, John Thompson, and transfer to Georgetown if the Rebels were ineligible to play in the 1991 postseason. Do you have a blog? The largest margin of victory ever. Not #1. But what makes them different than, say, 83 Houston, 85 Georgetown or 99 Duke? Brown, Josh
1991 UNLV Roll Call: The Starters. Marred records from the Sun Belt, to the American East, to the West Coast Conference, and everywhere in between. If there was a weakness to Ackles, other than his lack of offensive ability, it was his foul trouble. After a 113 to 64 humiliation of Fresno State, UNLV stood at 19-0. We havent talked about it once, Tarkanian told the Los Angeles Times when it was all over. Sidney Green enjoyed a four-year career at the university from 1979-1983 and Dedan Thomas Sr., who ranks sixth all-time in assists for the Rebels, represented the university roughly a decade later .