College Basketball Loses a Controversial but All-Time Great in Jerry Tarkanian

With Wednesday's death of Jerry Tarkanian, announced by his son, Danny, college basketball lost one of its greatest coaches.

The second half of that statement is no longer met with derision and skepticism. Tarkanian's legacy, at one time, was tarnished by three players in a hot tub, the NCAA constantly on his heels, and thus, a perception that he didn't always play by the rules.

Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. But later in his life, folks in the game started to appreciate Tarkanian for what he was able to accomplish. In 2013, he was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame, and UNLV put up a statue of Tarkanian in front of the Thomas & Mack Center with his trademark towel in his mouth. It didn't hurt the perception of him when he received a $2.5 million harassment settlement from the NCAA in 1998.

It also doesn't hurt when his accomplishments are put in perspective.

Tarkanian's Runnin' Rebels won more games in a 10-year period (from 1983 to 1992) than any team ever. Those 307 wins are more than Bob Knight's Hoosiers. More than Mike Krzyzewski's Blue Devils. More than Dean Smith's Tar Heels. More than John Wooden's Bruins or Adolph Rupp's Wildcats or Phog Allen's Jayhawks.

You could say that was at least partly the result of college basketball teams starting to play more games in the 1980s, but that record hasn't been bested since, and teams are playing even more games these days.

You could say "Tark the Shark" feasted on the Big West. But his record in March was just as stellar.

He coached the Rebels to four Final Fours and to a national title in 1990. That was the only team outside of the power-six conferences to win the title until Connecticut won in 2014.

The next season, with the NCAA turning up the heat on its investigation of his program, the Rebels entered the NCAA tournament undefeated. No team had been able to accomplish that until Wichita State did so in 2014.

The Runnin' Rebels were so close to finishing off that perfect season.

The undisputed best team in America, UNLV made it to the Final Four, where it would face Duke a year after beating the Blue Devils in the national championship game by 30 points, a margin that remains the largest in title-game history.

Only this time, the game was close. Point guard Greg Anthony fouled out with 3:51 left on a borderline charge call, and Duke finished on an 8-3 run to win by two. 

That team is not only considered the greatest to not win the title—the 1991 Runnin' Rebels are in the conversation for greatest college team ever.

"Even though this sounds like blasphemy, they were the best team," Jay Bilas, a Duke assistant that year, told Andy Glockner of Sports Illustrated. "The best team doesn't always win in college basketball and the NCAA tournament. But that was the best team. They had proven it all year long."

"We played some tough teams, and we played them on the road, and we just killed everybody," Tarkanian told Glockner in 2010. "All year long, I was telling our guys how tough the games would be, and then we'd go out and blow them away."

The run may have continued if Tarkanian had not been pressured into resigning after a picture emerged in May of 1991 of UNLV players David Butler, Anderson Hunt and Moses Scurry in a hot tub with convicted sporting-event fixer Richard Perry. It was never proved that those Rebels engaged in any such activity, but the damage was done, and Tarkanian ultimately vacated his position.

He coached one more season at UNLV in 1991-92, and his final team, which wasn't allowed to play in the NCAA tournament because of NCAA sanctions, finished 26-2.

"(Then-UNLV president Robert) Maxson didn’t like the fact that the hero on campus was Jerry Tarkanian," Sig Rogich, an adviser to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and longtime UNLV supporter, told Sean DeFrank of Vegas Seven. "And I can understand some of that as an academic, but I didn’t think it was enough to get rid of him. And it ruined our program. We would have had a dynasty. We could have won four or five national championships, and the NCAA knew it."

Tarkanian won because he had an ability to find talent. It didn't matter where that talent came from. Many of his best players, like Larry Johnson, were junior-college transfers. And he was able to get those guys to buy into playing together, playing fast and playing like the world was against them. Oftentimes, the world was.

"Tark just kept telling us, 'You need to stick together. They don’t want us to win a championship. They’re going to do anything they can to break us down and get us unfocused. The NCAA really wants me, but they're trying to take it out on all of you,'" Anderson Hunt, a starting guard from 1988-91, told DeFrank.

Eric Risberg/Associated Press

To say that all of Tarkanian's motivation was to get back at the NCAA would be a mistake. He was in it because he loved coaching basketball. He started his coaching career at the high school and junior college levels, winning four straight California JUCO championships before getting his first Division I job at Long Beach State in 1968.

He started his back-and-forth with the NCAA at Long Beach, where he had a local newspaper column and didn't shy away from going after the organization. The program, like UNLV, went on probation after he left but won like never before while he was there.

Tark went 122-20 and made four straight NCAA tournaments in five seasons at Long Beach, and he is still the school's all-time winningest coach.

Tarkanian was convinced in 1973 to come to UNLV, a school that had only been a Division I program for four years. The Runnin' Rebels became the greatest show in town and a national power. They built the 18,500-seat Thomas & Mack Center in 1983 because of Tarkanian's success. The pregame fireworks and theatrics would be mimicked across the country, and the rich and famous sat courtside in what became known as "Gucci Row."

Tarkanian returned to the sidelines for seven more years at Fresno State, and he won there, too. He made two NCAA tournaments and added six 20-plus-win seasons with the Bulldogs.

But Tark's heart was always in Vegas. And out in front of the Thomas & Mack Center is where Tark will forever live. Towel in his mouth.

Forever loved in Vegas. Forever one of the game's all-time greats.