Twenty years ago today, Tark went out on top

It was exactly 20 years ago today that UNLV was getting ready to play the final game of its 1991-92 basketball season, against Utah State.

The Rebels had won 22 consecutive games, which was typical in those days. They were two seasons removed from blowing out Duke for the national championship in Denver, a season removed from that stunning loss to Coach K in the Final Four in Indianapolis, when UNLV was even better than it was in 1989-90, gobs better than Christian Laettner and Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill and that bunch.

But nobody had expected the Rebels, who had lost all five starters, to be particularly good in 1991-92. In November, they had gone on the road to Louisiana State and beat Shaquille O'Neal by 21. A week later, they lost at Rutgers. A week after that, they lost at Missouri.

Then they did not lose again.

Isaiah Rider and Elmore Spencer and Dedan Thomas and Dexter Boney and Reggie Manuel and Evric Gray and H Waldman knew how to finish off an opponent. Home or away.

Those guys might have been Jerry Tarkanian's best coaching job.

Those guys won when nobody expected them to, and how nobody expected them to -- by playing a zone on defense.

"First time in 19 years," said Tark, who was 61 then, is 81 now and, man, where does the time go?

Those Rebels triumphed over the turmoil and the adversity that had tormented their coach for years. The season had evolved into a distraction of mythical proportions, but through it all, those Rebels kept on winning.

By then, Tark had grown weary of fighting the NCAA and his administration. He had agreed to resign at the end of the season.

And on March 3, 1992, the end of the season had arrived.

The Rebels were on probation in 1991-92, mostly stemming from the 1986 recruitment of Lloyd Daniels, the New York City playground legend who never scored a basket for UNLV, and let that be a lesson.

They were not allowed to play in the NCAA Tournament, or on television. They were not allowed to pass "Go," and by no means were they allowed to collect $200, because the NCAA watchdogs were on constant vigil, and so was Bob Maxson, the UNLV president.

But none of this precluded these overachieving Rebels from endearing themselves to longtime fans of the program while cultivating new ones.

The great Walter Payton attended the Rebels' shootaround on Tark's last day as their coach.

So an air of Sweetness permeated the Thomas & Mack Center on the afternoon of March 3, before the bittersweetness that evening would bring.

Tark said he didn't feel it until walking through the tunnel from the locker room just before tipoff.

The Rebels wore special warmups that night -- black pullovers with silver letters that spelled "TARK" -- and the pep band was tooting his horn, and the sellout crowd was going nuts, chanting his name, chanting for him to rescind his resignation one last time.

I remember getting goosebumps, like I do just before they drop the green flag at Indianapolis.

And then Tark came through that tunnel, into the light and into the noise, and he spotted a familiar face among 18,994 familiar faces and 159 members of the media, many of whom were sporting mullets, thanks to Billy Ray Cyrus.

It was Lynn Archibald, one of his former assistants at Long Beach State. And then Tark sort of lost it.

"He was there with his two kids, his wife and, my God, I didn't realize he would be there," Tarkanian said of Archibald, an assistant at Arizona State then. "It got me pretty emotional."

He stayed that way, too, as the Rebels pulled away to a 65-53 win in a game they had led 54-49 with four minutes to play.

Afterward, there was a 35-minute tribute during which Tark was given a new Saturn, and when he was handed the keys and the microphone, he said all of three words.

"I can't talk."

It had nothing to do with the Saturn's sticker price.

Lynn Archibald would die of prostate cancer in 1997; Walter Payton of liver disease in 1999. The UNLV team they watched that night finished the season 26-2 and ranked No. 7 nationally.

It was the last time the Rebels were a Top 10 team.

By the following October, Tark would be coach of the San Antonio Spurs, trying to win NBA games with Vinny Del Negro as his point guard.

By the October after that, not only would Tark be gone, but the light and the noise at the Thomas & Mack Center would be gone, too.

And they would be playing minor league hockey games in the house that he built.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.