Agreed.....Best college basketball team I've ever seen as well and beating that powerhouse Duke team by 30 in th Championship game was the most dominant performance.
Those 90 Running Rebels were must watch television!!! I have never in life seen a group of players play in sync the way they did . They seemed like a pro team against all other teams. Larry Johnson is one of my favorite players of all time . Love the hollering from Moses Scurry and David Butler - that alone struck fear in opponents. Long live Tarkanian.
UNLV was essentially the catalyst for that 1994 Arkansas team. When Todd day threw that limp wristed punch at Larry Johnson, Johnson basically laughed at him and went over to Nolan Richardson and told him “you need to get you some men on your team”. Richardson took his words to heart and got players like Dwight Stewart, Lee Wilson, Darnell Robinson and of course The Big Nasty.
Tarkanian was a genius when it came to getting players to communicate and pass the ball. UNLV was one of the greatest passing teams to ever play the game.
Tark is underselling his matchup zone. That locked teams down like nothing anyone else was doing, especially with their team. Used to love watching that team play; their game at Cameron Indoor was insane!
Greg Anthony, when asked before the title game about whether the team thought the game was Good vs. Evil said: "I am privileged to live in a nation that just doesn't educate the ELITE." It was the perfect answer, and of course we have found out in the years since that Duke has accepted a number of players who didn't have the academic qualifications that other Duke students did (see William Avery). UNLV is a state run college that is easy to get into. You have to have schools like that. Especially a school like UNLV with its restaurant and hospitality type majors that are were designed to give all students a real job after they graduated. There are a lot students with doctorates in history from Columbia who are driving cab cars right now in NYC.
They truly were a special squad. If you didn't know any better you thought you were watching a NBA team. They were that good. Clearly one of the best D1 Team ever assembled. Total package. Whether you loved or hated them, you had to be in awe of this team. The 91 title game was fixed, they were robbed. LJ was a Man among boys.
I followed that UNLV squad from 90' all the way to their loss to Duke in 91'. I see some people beefing on here about the refs calls but it was true. Greg Anthony had some suspect calls against him and ironically, he was the one that Duke had no answer for. He fouled out with a few minutes left in the game and Bobby Hurley cnotrolled the pace from that point on. Nonetheless, some folks, including me, felt that Augmon threw that game. Grant Hill was a major difference this time around.
To this day I still say that these guys threw that 2nd game against Duke. There's no way that a freshman Grant Hill made that big of a difference against this team. They were THAT damn good.
Lol. It was something. The next year they got robbed of an undefeated run to beat Duke. They didn't want them to make history and win back to back. Those fouls they called on UNLV replay in my mind like a nightmare still today. I felt like in the 90s just didn't go right.
Your dad is doing a great job with the current team. Keep your grades up and make him and our city proud. Cant wait to see you in a Rebel Uniform----stay hungry and work hard
LJ was the man!! It sucks that he had that herniated disc issue with his back. If that didn’t happen the sky was the limit. He still is a legend in my book.
It was not the same team.David Butler the starting genteel was not on the team.they had George ackles.he was ok but could not score like Butler.plus some of the players look like their pockets had been fill with some cash.Go back and look at the game.Hunt and Anthony and Johnson played like they were rebels.
He says "pummeling perennial power house Duke in the championship game". Another person who reinvents history. Duke was not perennial anything in 1990.
josh10177 Making it to the championship game doesn't make you a perennial power. It's in making it and winning on many occasions when you become a PERENNIAL power. Duke during this period became a perennial power after winning back to back titles in 1991 and 1992. In 1990 Duke had zero NCAA Tournament titles, so they weren't a perennial power at that point.
Duke considered a big time program already regardles of how they were doing during the season or previous. I mean they made the national championship and won back to back the next year.
Problem with Houston was they couldn’t shoot, whether it be jumpers or FT’s. That was exposed in the title game against NC State. UNLV had several guys who could knock down shots (Hunt, Johnson, Augmon, even Anthony would hit one here and there)
