The Rise and Fall of UNLV
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April 2, 1990, The Running Rebels are on the brink of finishing a historic season. The minutes passed. The lead kept expanding.It started at 10. Then grew to 13. Then 18. Then 23. Then 28. Then 34 before finally coming to rest at 30. Thirty. That was UNLV’s margin of victory in the 1990 NCAA basketball championship game over Duke in a record-setting 103-73 performance by the Rebels. That happened 26 years ago — April 2, 1990. The fact the Rebels won that night at McNichols Sports Arena in Denver wasn’t shocking. Coach Jerry Tarkanian’s team had been playing at a high level entering the NCAA Tournament and was the West Region’s No. 1. UNLV had survived a close call against Ball State, winning 69-67 in the regional semifinal, and rallied from seven points down at halftime to defeat Georgia Tech 90-81 in the national semifinal.
Still, there was one game remaining. Duke, the No. 3 seed in the East, had handled Arkansas 97-83 in the other semifinal. But UNLV was a confident team as it stepped onto the court for the final time in the 1989-90 season. Every player and coach thought the Rebels were good enough to beat the Blue Devils.But 103-73? No one, not Tarkanian and his players, not former NFL star Walter Payton, who had given the team a pregame pep talk, not Dick Vitale, the ESPN announcer who had jumped on the UNLV bandwagon, not the 17,765 who were in the building, thought this would be a blowout, much less an NCAA record — that still stands — for the largest margin of victory in a title game.
The Duke and UNLV would play again in the final four of 1991. And UNLV had reason to be confident entering the game. The Runnin' Rebels were the defending national champions on a 45-game winning streak. In their quest to be the first undefeated men's college basketball champion since the 1975-76 Indiana Hoosiers. UNLV had obliterated the so-called competition. 32 of their 34 victories were by double digits. And their opponent in the Final Four was the same team they had defeated 103-73 in the previous year's national championship. Only it didn't happen. Duke led by Christian Latener and Grant Hill beat UNLV 79-77. A loss that would haunt UNLV.
"Beating that UNLV team was a pivotal moment in Duke basketball history," Grant Hill says. "It legitimized us as a serious program. We became a great program at that moment."
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