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By John Katsilometes
Review-Journal
The team lives and breathes in tattered newspaper articles and time-worn highlight films.
It also is sustained by the force of word of mouth, with various accounts and anecdotes seeming to bloom into myth with the memories.
But for the 1976-77 UNLV basketball team, which 20 years ago this weekend became the first Rebel squad to ascend to the NCAA's Final Four, reality needs no embellishment.
The team really did score more than 100 points in 23 of 32 games. In an era when teams played with regimented patience and discipline, UNLV performed with verve and personality, rolling up 107 points per game and hitting the triple-digit mark 12 straight times.
It is no myth that the Rebels reeled off separate winning streaks of 14 and 11 games; no tall tale that their three losses were by a total of eight points and none occurred at the rollicking Las Vegas Convention Center.
Playing without offensive enhancements like the 3-point line and shot clock, UNLV scored an NCAA record 3,426 points. The mark went unchallenged until Loyala Marymount, with the benefit of those enhancments, broke it in 1989-90.
The Rebels of 1976-77, with their short shorts, tall hair and legs that wouldn't stop, drew an enthusiastic crowd of more than 10,000 at the Final Four in the Omni in Atlanta. For practice.
"That was a fun team, so exciting," former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian said. "No one played the way we did, and they didn't know how to handle us. We really were unique."
In a dominating sort of way. There seems no end to the team's improbable list of accomplishments.
UNLV played the University of San Francisco, the top-ranked team in the country, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and whipped the Dons by 26 points.
"We expected to win that game," former Rebel guard Tony Smith said. "But this was a total blowout. (USF) was never in the game."
Some developments defy logic. Known as a free-wheeling offensive machine, the Rebels forced opponents to cough up an average of 27 turnovers a game. Twelve times, teams scored 90 or more against UNLV -- and lost.
The team evoked awe, fear and, most of all, curiosity during its 29-3 Final Four run. UNLV started the season as a kind of novelty and ended it as one of college basketball's most compelling stories.
After 1976-77, the nickname "Runnin' Rebels," coined by former UNLV sports information director Dominic Clark, was familiar to any sports fan.
"When I first transferred here from junior college (in 1975-76), people thought I was going to another junior college," Smith said. "The exposure wasn't there. But that changed by the next season, definitely."
Glen Gondrezick has similar memories.
"In my freshman year, when I first got here, you could sit anywhere in the Convention Center," said Gondrezick, a starting forward in the 1976-77 season and now a UNLV broadcaster. "But by the end of my senior year, you couldn't get a seat. ... We had overflow crowds and they had to turn on big screens in the rotunda so people could watch the games."
Said former starting guard Robert Smith: "People wanted to see us. We were the team to be seen at that time."
Many components made the team alluring and imposing. Foremost, Tarkanian proved immediately upon taking over at UNLV he could reel in top talent.
Tarkanian arrived in 1973 after a six-year stint at Long Beach State, during which he went 122-20. In his first year he landed four top freshmen that would help carry the Rebels to national notoriety: Gondrezick, center Lewis Brown, and forwards Jackie Robinson and Eddie Owens.
Gondrezick wound up UNLV's No. 13 all-time scorer and No. 8 rebounder, and was the third-leading scorer and top rebounder in 1976-77. Owens remains the school's all-time leading scorer with 2,221 points and also was the leading scorer in 1976-77. Brown was a serviceable 6-foot-10 center who was the second-leading rebounder and fifth-leading scorer that season.
Only Robinson, who went on to a stellar four-year career at UNLV, didn't factor in the Final Four season. He injured an ankle in a typically fast-paced preseason scrimmage and took a medical redshirt.
The four freshmen of Tarkanian's first UNLV recruiting class led the Rebels to a 20-6 record in 1973-74. The legend of the Runnin' Rebels was launched.
The following season, Tarkanian added Robert Smith, a crafty 5-10 point guard known for his durability and playmaking skills. He also shot 82 percent from the free-throw line as UNLV went 24-5 in 1974-75.
In 1975-76 Tarkanian brought in another talent-loaded recruiting class, including guards Reggie Theus and "Sudden" Sam Smith.
Theus, at 6-6 an uncommonly tall and athletic guard who also could play forward, grew into an NBA star. Sam Smith rapidly became known as an uncanny long-range shooter with range up to 30 feet, a player Tarkanian called, "the best shooter I ever coached."
The 1975-76 Rebels offered a taste of the future, going 29-2 and reaching the second round of the NCAA Tournament, losing to Arizona 114-109 in overtime.
"I felt that the year before (the Final Four) was what really got us going," Tarkanian said. "We were so close to being an elite team then."
The nucleus was set that season, and Larry Moffett, a 6-7 junior center, was the final addition to the 1976-77 starting rotation. Gondrezick said the familiarity among teammates helped form the team into a cohesive unit.
"We knew each other well and we all knew that (1976-77) was the time to get it done as a team," Gondrezick said. "By my senior year, that team believed it was the best in the country. We all worked to win games and didn't care who got the points."
The Rebels' practices were nearly as fierce as their games.
"In practice, we concentrated on defense three-fourths of the time and worked so hard that the games were fun," Theus said. "Practices were not fun. Even the scrimmages were knock-down, drag-out fights."
Theus said the team's attention to defense has always been overlooked.
"The reason we scored like we did is because we prided ourselves on playing full-court defense, creating turnovers and taking charges," Theus said. "After that it was just a matter of getting the ball into anyone's hands, because we could all shoot."
No one argues the team's shooting prowess.
"It was the best shooting team I've ever seen," Tarkanian said. "It was unbelievable how well we could shoot the ball. Tony and Sam Smith were a couple of the best shooters ever and Theus was an NBA-caliber shooter. Eddie Owens never missed an open shot. Gondrezick was a very good shooter."
Which makes the ex-players, to this day, wonder what the numbers would have been if the NCAA 3-point line were in place.
"Someone told me once that if we had the 3-point line, we would've averaged 118 points," Gondrezick said.
"Everyone could shoot the 3-pointer," Tony Smith said. "And these were NBA 3-pointers we were hitting, from 25 feet. We were looking at the NBA line and imagining where it would be. But you have to speak of the era and the time that you're in, and we still scored an abundance of points."
Tarkanian's eight-man rotation was also athletic and well-conditioned enough to press and run nonstop. Sam and Robert Smith started at guard, Gondrezick and Owens at forward and Moffett at center. Spelling them were Tony Smith, Theus (who Tarkanian said was the team's best player by season's end) and Brown.
"Our bench strength, being able to go up and down the court, wore teams out," Tony Smith said. "I remember coming in for Robert and looking at the guy who was guarding him. You could see this guy's tongue hanging out and he was dead. I'd say, `Robert, did you save some of this guy for me?' "
As the season unfolded, the Rebels picked up a confidence-building 99-96 home victory over national power Louisville. During a rugged road stretch of three games in five days, UNLV won 107-106 at Bradley, lost 88-84 at Illinois State and won 89-88 at Rutgers.
"After that trip, I think we felt that we belonged and could play with anyone in the country," said Robert Smith, who won the Rutgers game with a last-second jump shot. "I remember at Illinois State, we showed up in their arena in our street clothes and the place was already packed. One of our boosters held up a UNLV No. 1 sign and they jumped all over us. But we still played well, considering."
The Rebels' NCAA Tournament run included the blowout victory over San Francisco, an 88-83 victory over Utah (avenging a 100-96 regular season loss), a 107-90 victory over Idaho State in the West Regional finals, an 84-83 loss to North Carolina in the Final Four and an anticlimactic 106-94 victory over North Carolina-Charlotte in the now-defunct NCAA consolation game.
Twenty years after the Final Four run, a few of the top players -- the so-called "Elegant Eight" -- remain in the area.
Gondrezick has been a UNLV broadcaster for five seasons. Tony Smith works at the front desk of the Sahara hotel. Robert Smith is a teacher and assistant basketball coach at Bishop Gorman High School. Moffett and Sam Smith work for a Las Vegas travel agency.
Theus is the most high-profile former Rebel, starring in the NBC Saturday morning sitcom, "Hangtime." He's also employed as a studio broadcaster for Turner Network Television after a successful NBA career with Chicago, Sacramento, Atlanta, Orlando, New Jersey and Denver.
Some have seemingly vanished. Owens is a truck driver in his hometown of Houston. Brown has held a series of odd jobs in Southern California.
Their lives have taken a series of twists and turns. The most recent, disturbing development occurred in February, when Sam Smith was arrested on a 16-month-old federal warrant charging that he sold crack cocaine to a federal drug agent. He is set to appear in court May 21.
But Smith insists his life is clean and has been for the past 18 months.
"It's something I did, and I learned my lesson," Smith said. "I was lost, I'm sorry that it happened and it caused me a lot of embarrassment. I pray every day, and I still talk to all the guys."
Bonded by past glory, frustration lingers for the members of the 1976-77 Rebels: Twenty years after becoming the first UNLV team to reach the Final Four, they were not honored for the accomplishment during the 1996-97 season. No player's number has been retired by the school.
Perhaps Damian Smith, son of Tony Smith and a five-year senior who recently concluded his final season with the Rebels, put it best:
"As I grew older and understood the Final Four and the whole college basketball scene, I began to realize what my dad's team did," he said. "They put UNLV on the map."
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