UNLV basketball averaged 26.8 victories per season during Jerry Tarkanian's 19 seasons as coach but just 17.8 wins over the past 14 seasons, under five head coaches and four assistants who were promoted to the post in interim roles. Photo by The Associated Press. Isaiah "J.R." Rider was one of the most gifted Rebels players ever, but he also proved to be among the most troublesome. Review-Journal File Photo Jerry Tarkanian listens to then-UNLV president Robert Maxson before the start of a Rebels home game in 1987. While publicly appearing as if he was in full support of his beleaguered basketball coach, Maxson was intent on seeing Tarkanian resign or be dismissed, according to former athletic director Brad Rothermel. Review-Journal File Photo Rollie Massimino

At the moment tragedy hits, the mind goes blank and the body numb, and that's how Jerry Tarkanian felt as he walked off a hardwood court under a Teflon dome in Indianapolis.

The date -- March 30, 1991 -- lives in infamy for the former UNLV basketball coach.

At age 76, Tarkanian clearly recalls every detail leading up to the final moment. It unfolded in slow motion right before his disbelieving, droopy eyes.

"I was just in a state of shock," he said.

"I was stunned for about six weeks. That team was so good. That game still haunts me."

The Rebels, upset by Duke 79-77 in the NCAA Tournament semifinals, were knocked off

the top of the college basketball world at that moment. More than 15 years later, UNLV's fall from grace is still stunning.

Tarkanian was gone less than a year after the Rebels' 45-game winning streak and run as No. 1 abruptly ended.

The program never has recovered from his resignation, forced by then-UNLV president Robert Maxson amid a dark cloud of NCAA penalties, off-court problems and personal differences.

The Rebels have not won an NCAA Tournament game since March 23, 1991, an unthinkable drought considering their dominance at the time.

Greg Anthony, the point guard for the 1990 national championship team, played the final game of his college career in the defeat to Duke, as did stars Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon.

"I never, never imagined that we would fall off the face of the national stage," Anthony said. "We just took a nosedive and it's so unfortunate."

Tarkanian built something special in 19 years at UNLV, winning 509 games and winning over the hearts of fans who still love him to this day.

He set a standard of competitive excellence never to be forgotten by many, but also watched over a program remembered by others for some not-so-exemplary behavior.

Tarkanian embraced the image of a rebel, yet always claimed innocence when NCAA investigators showed up on campus looking for trouble.

In most cases, he was exonerated. In a few cases, he was not excused.

In the end, right or wrong, it cost him his job.

And after losing him, the Rebels have never recovered.

With an all-time record of 981-403, UNLV is the third-winningest program by percentage (.709) in Division I history -- ranking behind Kentucky and North Carolina and ahead of Kansas, Duke and UCLA.

But the winning has been missing for much of the past 15 seasons, and a proud program has been riddled with instability.

Since Tarkanian's departure, the Rebels have had nine head coaches (including interims), five athletic directors, two NCAA Tournament appearances and no NCAA victories.

"People are really hungry for what they remember from the late '80s and early '90s, and I understand that," said Lon Kruger, entering his third year as coach, and the one now under the gun to revive UNLV's winning tradition.

"We've got to earn that credibility back."

SEEDS OF DISCONTENT

Maxson was hired in 1984 to build a strong academic reputation at UNLV. Also on his agenda, some claim, was taking down Tarkanian.

Brad Rothermel, athletic director from 1981 to 1990, recalled his first meeting with Maxson in September 1984.

Rothermel stopped by Tarkanian's office afterward and said, "He's coming after you, Coach.'"

Tarkanian was climbing toward legendary status as a coach, and already had been through litigation with the NCAA.

"Different people have said different things about what president Maxson's marching orders were when he came. But it was clear to me as early as 1984 that his intentions were to see if he couldn't separate Jerry Tarkanian from the institution," Rothermel said.

"It took some time for him to be able to do that, but eventually he succeeded. Of course, we've kind of been in free fall ever since in our program. I don't think anybody in president Maxson's administration realized how devastating it would be to make the move that he was intending to make."

Maxson was handed the ammunition he needed in July 1990, when the NCAA Committee on Infractions, citing gross rules violations, banned the Rebels from defending their national championship.

UNLV offered alternatives to the ban and reached a compromise with the NCAA, which allowed the Rebels to participate in the 1991 NCAA Tournament to defend their title. In exchange, they were banned from the 1992 tournament.

In December 1990, the NCAA alleged 29 infractions by UNLV, many stemming from the 1986 recruitment of New York City playground legend Lloyd "Sweet Pea" Daniels. In 1987, Daniels was caught on videotape buying cocaine from an undercover police officer in Las Vegas. The incident was replayed on local newscasts.

"The big mistake that I made was I took a chance on Lloyd Daniels. Everything backfired on us there," Tarkanian said. "But I saw him recently and he told me I saved his life, so I feel good about how Lloyd turned out."

In May 1991, the Review-Journal published a front-page photo of UNLV players Anderson Hunt, David Butler and Moses Scurry in a hot tub with known sports fixer Richard Perry.

That negative publicity reportedly angered Maxson, who did not return a message when called last week for this story. He continually has declined to comment on UNLV athletic matters since leaving the school in 1994.

In June 1991, Tarkanian announced he would resign as coach at the end of the 1991-1992 season.

Tarkanian said the beginning of the end for him came when Maxson reportedly forced Rothermel to resign as athletic director and replaced him with Dennis Finfrock.

"That's when the program really suffered, when Finfrock came in, because he had no qualifications to be an athletic director," Tarkanian said. "The difference between Finfrock and Rothermel was astronomical. I still feel if we didn't have Finfrock sabotaging our program, we would have won that (Duke) game, too."

In November 1991, Finfrock resigned, saying he was taking too much criticism from Tarkanian supporters who contended the coach's resignation was orchestrated by Finfrock and Maxson. They were only two of three villains in Tarkanian's eyes, the third being university counsel Brad Booke.

"I really have greater animosity for Booke and Finfrock than I do for Maxson, even though Maxson probably orchestrated it all," Tarkanian said. "I have never in my life met an attorney who lied more than Brad Booke. That's who Maxson surrounded himself with, Booke and Finfrock.

"If Booke told you 'Good morning' it was probably dark outside. If he ever took a polygraph test, I'm sure he would have gotten electrocuted."

The NCAA had launched an investigation that lasted almost six years before determining there was a lack of institutional control by UNLV over its men's basketball program. In 1993, the Rebels were placed on three years' probation.

"We took so much heat because of the NCAA, but after five years of the most intensive investigation ever, they did not have one major violation," Tarkanian said.

As for the charge of a lack of institutional control, Tarkanian said, "That was the administration, not us."

Tarkanian and Maxson are historically inseparable because of the way their relationship ended, but Tarkanian said for a long time he did not think Maxson was out to get him.

"I didn't believe it because Maxson used to write me nice letters all the time to say how much he supported me," Tarkanian said. "He actually had me believing he was on my side. I never had a confrontation with him. I thought the guy loved me. My friends said, 'Tark, you're so naive.'

"The administration -- Maxson, Booke and Finfrock -- they wanted people to believe we had bad guys who were great players. But they were great guys."

Before the 1990 championship game against Duke, which UNLV won 103-73, Tarkanian was asked by ESPN analyst Dick Vitale to do a TV interview. The first question was a reference to the game pitting "Good versus Evil."

Tarkanian responded: "That really upsets me. I know those Duke guys and they're not bad guys at all. People shouldn't say that about the Duke players."

TURMOIL BOILS OVER

The controversial ouster of Tarkanian rocked the program and is a hot-button topic to this day.

"I hear it all the time, the situation when Tarkanian left, it divided this town in half," said athletic director Mike Hamrick, hired in 2003. "We're still working hard to get some of those wounds to go away."

Maxson and former athletic director Jim Weaver, hired in November 1991, replaced Tarkanian in 1992 with Rollie Massimino, who coached Villanova to the 1985 national championship.

Tarkanian's last team finished 26-2. Massimino's first team, led by enigmatic star and Tarkanian recruit Isaiah "J.R." Rider, finished the season 21-8. But the Rebels were eliminated in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament by Southern California.

They played the game without Rider, the nation's second-leading scorer, after he was suspended by UNLV because the school determined, principally through the misspelling of "Isiah" as the author, that a tutor had written part of a paper for him.

Earlier in the season, Rider was arrested and spent a night in jail after abusing a drive-through attendant at Jack in the Box by throwing a milkshake in the worker's face.

Massimino was an abrasive personality and his arrogance did not go over well in Las Vegas, especially after his second season ended with a 15-13 record.

"I think first and foremost, there was an anti-Tarkanian sentiment throughout the university at the administrative level," said Anthony, now an NBA analyst for ESPN. "I think they were so dead-set to get someone unlike Coach Tarkanian, and that backfired.

"Looking back, they made some tactical mistakes in the direction they went after Coach. It backfired and it backfired in a big way."

The series of administrative blunders in the 1990s disappoints Reggie Theus, a star for the Rebels from 1975 to 1978. Theus had his jersey retired in 1997, and said he got tired of watching from afar as the program foundered.

"The former administration made several bad decisions and the program really suffered," Theus said. "I want so badly for the program to do well. I look at it and it makes me sick to my stomach."

Evric Gray played for both Tarkanian and Massimino, and had nothing positive to say about Massimino.

"It was the worst transition ever," Gray said. "Tark was more laid-back. Rollie got fired because he didn't know how to deal with the media, yelling at them and cussing them out. He just was not a very nice person to them and Tark was very open to everyone.

"Tark was a funny person and Massimino didn't understand how to deal with people. He talked to people like they were little kids. His attitude was East Coast.

"They should have never got rid of Coach Tark, and then the program would have been stable. When they brought in Massimino, it screwed up a lot of stuff. My last two years at UNLV were horrible. I still regret what happened."

Massimino left town bitter, but richer. He agreed to a $1.855 million buyout, after it was revealed that Maxson and Weaver arranged for a secret supplemental contract giving Massimino an extra $375,000 per year that the university regents did not knowingly approve.

Maxson and Weaver both resigned in 1994, temporarily putting an end to four years of turmoil that wrecked the program.

Tim Grgurich, an assistant under Tarkanian from 1981 to 1992, was named head coach in October 1994.

Tarkanian said Massimino told him his buyout from UNLV called for payments of $1,000 per day for five years.

Massimino, now coaching a new NAIA program at Northwood University in West Palm Beach, Fla., did not return messages left at his office.

"What amazes me is they brought Massimino in and gave him two times my salary, and Rollie's son was making more as an assistant than Grgurich," Tarkanian said. "Grgurich was maybe the top assistant in the country, and Rollie's son was just starting out.

"I talked to Rollie and he said he went down to Florida and bought a condominium and a boat with UNLV's money."

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN

If he had been allowed to remain at UNLV, Tarkanian said, Grgurich would have succeeded him and the program could have avoided the mess of controversy and mediocrity that followed.

As it turned out, when Grgurich finally did take over, Tarkanian was distanced from the program and Grgurich coached only seven games before leaving due to health concerns.

"What was so sad is, I was 62 at the time and I only wanted to go one or two more years," Tarkanian said. "If that would have happened, Tim would have had the program ahead of Duke, ahead of North Carolina. Nobody would have touched him.

"It's frightening how good UNLV would have been. We had things going really good. With Tim being the coach, the program was going to get a lot better. We had kids all over the country wanting to come here."

The Rebels had point guard Jason Kidd committed in 1992, but the situation with Tarkanian caused Kidd to attend California instead and he went on to become an NBA All-Star.

Grgurich returned to the NBA as an assistant coach, effectively severing another link to the glory days.

"Grgurich, in the gym with the ball, is as good as anyone ever has been, and I've watched Dean Smith do practices and I've watched Bobby Knight do practices," Rothermel said.

"Coach Massimino, maybe for a lot of reasons, obviously wasn't successful, and we really haven't been able to find anybody since who could get us back consistently in that direction."

Dave Rice, who played on the 1990 title team, represented the little bit of continuity that UNLV did have for several years. Rice coached under Tarkanian and Grgurich, and was later retained when Bill Bayno and Charlie Spoonhour were hired as head coaches.

Now in his second year on the Brigham Young staff, Rice left UNLV when Kruger was hired in 2004.

Rice touched on the theory that Massimino arrived to a no-win situtation, although many say Massimino's cavalier attitude decreased his chances to succeed.

"It was just a really, really difficult time to come to Vegas and replace Coach Tark, and that's not a negative on Coach Massimino, who was obviously a terrific basketball coach. It's hard to replace a guy like that," Rice said.

"I think there was a lot of pressure on the coaching staffs at UNLV because of the unbelievable success that Coach Tark had there. It is a very, very difficult standard to live up to. It was never anything we were afraid of or shied away from, though."

Bayno, an assistant under John Calipari at Massachusetts, was hired in 1995, won 22 games in his second season and took the Rebels to the NCAA Tournament in 1998.

Bayno brought talent to UNLV. But his best player, Shawn Marion, stayed only for the 1998-99 season before jumping to the NBA, where he stars for the Phoenix Suns.

Marion was set to sign with North Carolina until Dean Smith retired.

"I thought this was a big-time program and I think it still is. It's just a matter of getting that good crop of players in here and setting it on fire again," Marion said.

"It's hard for any program to do that on a consistent basis, because if you've ever been in trouble with the NCAA, I think that's part of it because some players won't look at you."

The Rebels went 23-8 in the 1999-2000 season and returned to the NCAAs, but again lost in the first round. And the NCAA trouble that Marion spoke of soon reared its ugly head again.

In December 2000, UNLV was placed on four years' probation, including a one-year post-season ban, by the NCAA for recruiting infractions involving Lamar Odom in 1996 and 1997. According to the NCAA report, UNLV booster and local dentist David Chapman gave Odom payments totaling about $4,000 before the university denied admission to Odom, who never played for the Rebels.

The association with Odom was a black eye on the Bayno era.

In August 1997, less than a month after being released from his letter of intent, Odom was cited by Las Vegas police for soliciting an act of prostitution. Odom was one of more than 30 people cited as part of a vice section undercover operation.

When the NCAA probation was announced, Bayno was reassigned within the athletic department, ending his tenure with a 94-64 record, and Max Good was named head coach for the remainder of the season.

"I think the program has been a little bit unlucky," Rice said. "I felt like with Coach Bayno the program was really close to turning the corner and it didn't quite work out."

Ten days after being removed as coach, Bayno denied having a relationship with a nightclub owner who was facing federal racketeering charges for prostitution. Sports Illustrated reported Bayno had befriended Steve Kaplan, who owned an Atlanta strip club. The story reported Kaplan provided Bayno with strippers for sex with the former coach at The Mirage in June 1998.

Bayno had planned a $1.8 million lawsuit against UNLV, but dropped it after the school agreed to pay him $400,000 to cover the remaining two years on his contract.

KRUGER'S CHALLENGE

After being turned down in a public courtship of coach Rick Pitino, UNLV lured Charlie Spoonhour out of retirement in March 2001.

Spoonhour was hampered by scholarship limitations, but won 21 games in each of his first two seasons and went to the NIT twice.

"Bayno recruited some pretty good players and pretty good guys, and some people tend to overlook that," Spoonhour said.

"Anytime you go through an NCAA situation, it hurts a little bit. I thought the idea was to get guys to go to school and try to make sure we didn't get in any more NCAA difficulty. I think it was pretty apparent if there were any more rules violations, they were going to shut things down."

In February 2004, during Spoonhour's third season, he stepped down citing health issues. His son, Jay, coached the team for the final 10 games and returned to the NIT.

The Rebels lost in the Mountain West Conference Tournament championship game all three years of the Spoonhour era.

"In the long run, I think we accomplished a lot of what the administration wanted us to do," he said.

Hamrick turned to Kruger, who had taken Florida to the Final Four before a short stint as an NBA head coach with the Atlanta Hawks.

"What we were looking for is a coach who could add some stability to the program. There has been a lot of instability for a long period of time," Hamrick said. "You need someone who had an impeccable record with the NCAA, and you wanted someone who had taken teams to the NCAA Tournament and to the Final Four.

"Our graduation rate was horrendous. All of that is critical and some people don't always see that or understand that."

Kruger might not project a flashy image that sells in Las Vegas, but as long as he wins and keeps the program clean, that will be a big step in the right direction for UNLV.

"You want people in your organization with character, not people who are characters," Hamrick said.

Kruger and Hamrick have made efforts to reconnect with the Tarkanian legacy.

"It's a lot better feeling now with Coach Kruger being here," Anthony said. "I think of every coach we've had since Tarkanian, he's the guy most suited to do it."

The Thomas & Mack Center court was dedicated in honor of Tarkanian last year, and Anthony had his jersey retired last week on the same night a Legends Alumni Game was held to reunite former Rebels.

"One thing I know is you have to embrace the expectations and use the past as the positive that it is, because for those of us who played at UNLV, there is a special bond with putting on that uniform," Rice said.

Expectations always will exist at a level above reality at UNLV, and Kruger said he welcomes that challenge.

Theus, head coach at New Mexico State after serving as an assistant to Pitino at Louisville, expressed interest in the UNLV job before Kruger was hired.

"I have a lot of respect for Coach Kruger and what he's doing. I think the current administration has done a much better job," Theus said. "That history has carried the program for 15 years. It's still considered a big-time program, but that window is closing."

Armen Gilliam was a force in the middle for the Rebels from 1984 to 1987, and during his stay helped Tarkanian compile a 98-11 record.

"As time has gone on, I think the people here in Las Vegas appreciate Coach Tarkanian and the legacy he built here and he left here. They expect greatness here at UNLV. When I was here, we were the No. 1 team in the country for three years, and I think the people here are kind of spoiled and they want the same," Gilliam said.

"It takes time to build a program like that, but I think some good pieces are in place now."

MONDAY'S PART 2: CAN UNLV RETURN TO THE NATIONAL ELITE?

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