Old School

Original Old School: Leaders of the New School

CHN — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:01:39 -0700

Welcome back to the great state of Michigan for this year’s Final Four! In honor of the occasion let’s take a look back at the squad from Michigan that changed the face of college basketball, altered our view of “cool” and, arguably, paved the way for the SLAM generation (sorry, AI). Juwan, Chris, Jalen, Ray, and Jimmy, this one’s for you. While some disappointed on the pro level and Juwan is the only one still in playing in the Association, we’ll never forget all of your contributions. Thanks for making us possible…SLAM #51. —Tzvi Twersky
by Alan Paul
“The Fab Five was once in a lifetime! What they achieved will never, ever happen again.”
The familiar voice of Dick Vitale’s booms through the phone line, scratchy and emphatic. He may be a bit less frenzied off the air, but Vitale can’t contain his excitement when the subject turns to the Fab Five, the heralded freshmen who drove Michigan to consecutive title games in ’92 and ’93. “This story deserves special acclaim,” Vitale says. “I can’t tell you how many times I hear coaches say, ‘We can’t win because we have two freshmen in our rotation.’ It’s absolutely accepted wisdom and the Fab Five turned it on its head. I think what they did is absolutely unique in the history of basketball and doesn’t get the play it deserves.”
Vitale’s statement is accurate but stunning nonetheless. How could the Fab Five be underrated when, despite never winning a league or national championship, they still managed to change the face of college ball? The concept would have been unfathomable nine years ago when Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson and Jimmy King were garnering countless headlines and being covered in a manner more MTV than ESPN.
“They were greeted like rock stars,” recalls Rob Pelinka, a role player on those teams and now an agent whose clients include Jazz rookie DeShawn Stevenson. “We sometimes needed police escorts because our bus would be surrounded by people.”
And just like every new sensation from Elvis to Eminem, there was serious debate about whether the Fab Five represented something creative and wonderful or arrogant and destructive. Their brash confidence, in-your-face trash talking and hip-hop fashion sense were both embraced and attacked like no college sports team before or since. The debate continues to this day, especially in Ann Arbor, where the basketball team struggles along under a cloud of impropriety that dates back to the Fabs’ recruitment. But one thing is beyond debate: the Fab Five represented something entirely new, an entire class of blue chip recruits covering every position, each of whom lived up to their top billing.
Power forward Webber was Michigan’s Mr. Basketball and the nation’s top recruit. Howard, a 6-9 center, and the 6-5 shooting guard King were the top players in Illinois and Texas, respectively, and Rose was a 6-8 pg who had led Detroit’s Southwestern High to two state titles. Jackson was the only one of the five who wasn’t a McDonald’s All-American, but the 6-6 Texan was one of the nation’s top small forward prospects. And while serendipity and coach Steve Fisher’s intense leg work certainly played huge roles in landing such an esteemed class, the Fab Five also recruited themselves.
“Juwan is responsible for the whole thing,” says Webber today. “Jalen and I had talked about going to school together since we were 12, but Juwan is the one who got it going. He made us believe that we could create something great together.”
Explains Howard, “I started a chain reaction. Jimmy and I met on our visit and decided to go to Michigan. Then I called Chris, because we had become good friends through the All-Star games, and started working on him. I persuaded him and he got a hold of Jalen, which is exactly what I wanted. I was looking to win a national title or two, instead of just going somewhere and being assured of being the man.”
It didn’t take long for the dreams to come to fruition; all five recall that the chemistry was immediate. “The day we all met, we played a pickup game outside our dorm and it was just there,” says Webber.
Nonetheless, it takes a huge leap for a memorable pickup squad to become NCAA title contenders. Most great college teams result from a slow blending of talents, with experience trumping nearly everything else. The Fab Five turned that formula on its head. Juniors Pelinka, James Voskuil, Michael Talley and Eric Riley were key contributors, but clearly support players to the five freshmen, a seemingly impossible situation deftly managed by Fisher and his staff.
“It takes freshmen a while to grasp the college game,” says Randy Ayers, a current Sixers assistant who was the head man at Ohio State at the time. “A high school star has an adjustment period learning to accept sacrificing for the good of the team. That almost always takes a year or two, but the Fab Five found their niches immediately. Chris, Jalen and Juwan were the go-to guys and the Texas kids were the defenders. And they played off each other beautifully.”
Adds Vitale, “These guys truly enjoyed each other’s company and responded as a unit, with the emphasis on the team rather than individual stats. They were a very unselfish team that blended extremely well.”
And, the players all say, they made each other better on a daily basis, filling one another with their trademark confidence. “As a group, we always felt invincible,” says Webber. “Individually, you always have fear and doubt, but we never did as a team. I felt that together we could accomplish anything.”
While the Fab Five’s critics accused them of showboating—“too much with the French pastry and the hot-dogging!” proclaimed broadcaster Al McGuire—the fact is, they played solid, team-oriented ball. If you watch their games today—easy to do, thanks to ESPN Classic—you’ll see a confident unit playing great help D, running crisp sets and effortlessly improvising whenever necessary.
“We had pretty good game-time execution, which is often overlooked because of some of the players’ flamboyance,” says Jay Smith, then a Michigan assistant, now the coach of Central Michigan University. Indeed, from their very first tip-off, Webber, Rose and King in particular exhibited tremendous flavor to go with their savvy. Webber was a dominant post presence with supple hands and ferocious power. Rose was a cocksure point with maddening lapses but an uncanny knack for coming through in the clutch. And King was a tremendous finisher as well as a deadly three-point shooter and reliable defensive stopper. Howard, meanwhile, was rock solid in the post, making teams pay for collapsing on Webber, and Jackson was a steady hand who often came through with crucial baskets, boards and stops. All five turned in highlight-reel worthy jams on a regular basis.
“There were times when we just played basketball, and it may not have been all that structured, but we often ran the passing game, which is really just fundamental ball: reading each other, setting picks and cutting,” says King, who, like Jackson, is now playing in the IBL. “We were able to do it well because of our knowledge and understanding of the game, and because we practiced it a lot.”
But much of the initial buzz about the Fab Five had little to do with fundamentals—or basketball at all. Gallons of ink were spilled about their flapping shorts, black socks and gleaming bald domes and their constant on-court chatter, as they endlessly jawed at both opponents and each other. If it seems hard to understand why such things would cause a furor, that itself is evidence of the Fab Five’s impact. Watch their games and you’ll see that while the Fab Five’s opponents look dated in their clingy unis, the Michigan youngsters—even now—look contemporary. “They completely changed the fashion of college ball,” says Ayers.
And while some critics blasted Fisher for allowing such freedom, the coach wisely used it as a motivational tool.
“Fish would let us do things like get bigger shorts and wear black socks if we practiced hard,” Webber recalls. “He was like, ‘You can wear what you want as long as you work hard, practice right and play smart.’”
The group first came to serious national acclaim in the fifth game of their rookie year, when they took defending champs Duke to overtime before falling 85-81. Most observers considered it a great moral victory, but the Michigan players were incensed they lost a game they could have won. But while the site of Webber and Rose yapping in the faces of Christian Laettner and Bobby Hurley delighted those who found the Dookies arrogant and insufferable, it also ruffled a lot of feathers. Columnists spewed and older Michigan alums stewed. Even refs weren’t beyond getting in on the act, as when Rose got T’d up for smiling.
The Fab Five seemed unbothered by any of it, however, finishing their freshman season 21-8 and ranked 14th in the nation, with a sixth seed in the Big Dance. In a fitting omen, the team ran into Muhammad Ali, the man who invented trash talking, at their Atlanta hotel the night before their first tournament game, against Temple. When The Greatest pulled Howard close and whispered “Shock the world!” in his young ear, The Fab Five had themselves a new rallying cry, which they rode to an Elite Eight battle with Big Ten champion Ohio State. The Jim Jackson-led Buckeyes had beaten Michigan twice already, but things had changed.
“They were a totally different team,” recalls Ayers. “They were physically stronger and they played smarter and with more confidence.”
Different enough to win a thrilling OT game, 75-71, catapulting them to the Final Four, where Nick Van Exel’s Cincinnati squad lay in waiting. After winning a nail-biter, the Fab Five had another date with Duke. Though they seemed unflappable, they came out for introductions lacking their usual fire, with nary a chest bump or holler. But if the rookies were a tad nervous, the reigning kings looked downright spooked. Perennial tourney hero Laettner sleepwalked through the first half, and the Fab Five clawed their way to a one-point lead.
It didn’t last. At the six-minute mark of the second half, the roof caved in and Michigan suddenly couldn’t score or defend. They ended up losing by 20, sending Webber running off the court, his uniform pulled over his sobbing eyes. In the locker room, he and his teammates all pledged to never again feel such crushing disappointment. They were at least sure of one thing: there was always next year.
But the sophomore season wasn’t the same for any of the Fab Five. “The novelty wore off and people no longer seemed to like the confidence and swagger they carried,” says Smith. “It got to the point where you either loved them or hated them.”
And, indeed, many younger fans gave serious love. Though they were widely criticized in the press, baggy shorts, black socks and M logos became as ubiquitous as Nikes on playgrounds and in gyms from coast to coast. And the impact was felt throughout college ball. Opposing coaches began letting their players alter their uniforms, and the Fab Five’s fashion sense already seemed less radical. By the time they faced North Carolina in the ’93 title game, the Tar Heels shorts were even longer than theirs. But that was little consolation to a group of 19-year-olds who felt themselves being tarred and feathered as everything-that’s-wrong-with-sports-and-kids-today.
“It’s a good story to build someone up and it’s a good story to tear them back down,” says King. “I understand that now, but at the time we couldn’t understand how we went from being media darlings to the nation’s bad boys. We didn’t really do anything to warrant that.”
In truth, as sophomores, the Fab Five were sometimes a bit out of control. After a big win at Michigan State, several players pretended they were defecating on the Spartans’ center-court S. And the team talked incessant trash before an early season rematch with Duke, with Webber saying he “wished Laettner would come back from [the NBA] so we can beat him too.” The Cameron Crazies had a field day heckling the team, as Duke pasted them by 11.
Still, the Fab Five righted themselves to go 25-4 and earn a No. 1 seed in the West regional. Now the attacks could really begin. Before the start of the tourney, Bill Walton called the Fab Five “one of the most overrated and underachieving teams of all time…who epitomize a lot of what’s wrong with a lot of basketball players.” It was the most vicious and well-publicized—but certainly not the only—assault on the team.
“We were just playing ball and having fun, and people said, ‘Just play, be quiet and don’t enjoy your wins,” says King. “But we weren’t putting on a show. We were just having fun doing what we love. We weren’t kicking people when they were on the ground like Christian Laettner did. But no matter what happened, teams like Indiana, UNC and Duke got only good press, because their coaches were perceived as being strong and in control, and we got attacked for taking over college basketball because we were perceived as being out of control.”
In the second round, the overrated underachievers pulled off the greatest comeback in Michigan history, coming back from 19 down to beat UCLA in overtime 86-84 on a King putback at the buzzer. After beating George Washington, the only thing standing in the way of a second straight Final Four was Temple, led by Eddie Jones, Aaron McKie and a bunch of less-talented tough guys. Chaney’s big men did everything but gouge out Webber’s and Howard’s eyes. On the verge of defeat, Chaney was finally T’d up for spewing profanities at both Fisher and the refs, had to be restrained by his assistant coaches and finally refused to shake Fisher’s hand—then went to a press conference and blasted the Fab Five for taunting.
“That kind of criticism was really bothersome all year long,” says King. “We just ignored it. In fact, we never even talked about how much less fun the second year was until Chris said it in a Final Four press conference. I remember thinking, ‘So it’s not just me.’”
In the semifinals, Michigan was a seven-point underdog to Jamal Mashburn’s powerful Kentucky team, which had dismantled its tourney opponents by an average of 31 points, thanks to Rick Pitino’s brutal end-to-end pressure. The Fab Five took the Cats into OT, their fourth extra period in eight games, before winning 81-78. It was not only their best-played game in months, but also one of the most memorable Tournament battles in recent years.
Despite all the criticism, pressure and close calls, they’d made it back to their second title game, where they would face UNC. In the first half, the Fab Five were again flat and out of sync, down six at the break. Then Fisher aggressively challenged them in the locker room and Webber lifted the team en route to 23 points, 11 rebounds and three blocks. The team got in trouble when Rose and King lost their shooting touches down the stretch, but Webber seemed fated to be the hero when he grabbed a missed UNC free throw with 20 seconds left and looked upcourt. After getting away with an uncalled traveling violation, he was headed for the history books—for all the wrong reasons.
Carolina led by two. With Rose covered, CWebb headed to the other end of the court, picked up his dribble and panicked. With Pelinka wide open and desperately waving his arms behind the three-point line across court and King staking out position underneath the basket, Webber called timeout. Michigan had none left. A T was whistled, UNC hit the shots and went on to win 77-71.
To a man, the Michigan players will tell you they never considered the possibility of losing that game. So they had to skip doubt and leap right to heartbreak. Again. Before long, Webber would announce he was leaving school for the NBA, and that was that for the Fab Five. They finished their two-year run at 56-14, including two losses in the games that mattered most.
Might Walton have been right? Were they just a bunch of overhyped losers? If you ever ask Vitale that question, be ready to duck.
“It is absolutely absurd for people to criticize the Fab Five as underachievers or failures because they didn’t win a title,” Vitale says. “College ball is not the NBA. It’s one game and there’s a lot of luck involved. Many great teams don’t win titles, but we unfortunately live in a world where if you don’t cut down the nets, you didn’t achieve anything. That’s a ridiculous perspective.”
And no team proved that point more than the Fab Five.

Original Old School: Storybook Ending

CHN — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 09:02:15 -0700

As the NCAA Tourney winds down and 64 teams are whittled down to 1 (I see you, Scottie Reynolds), we continue to unveil Old School SLAM stories that are on-point. This week we take a look back at the ’76-77 NCAA Champs, Marquette. Now known for Dwyane Wade, Tom Crean and their unique jerseys, Al McGuire’s Marquette team was once the champs. Here is how SLAM recaptured that title game in SLAM #59.–Tzvi Twersky
by Ryan Jones
“Coach never actually got it out of his mouth, that he was quitting.” This is how Bo Ellis remembers it. He was there, with his teammates, crowded into a downtown Milwaukee restaurant on a cold December night, when Al McGuire came as close as he could to giving his players the news.
“He said coaching was starting to take a toll on his health, just felt like it was time to stop,” explains Ellis, a 6-9 senior forward and captain of that ’76-77 Marquette basketball team. “But to this day, he never got it out to say he was quitting. He broke down and started crying, and ran out of the restaurant. We finished our meal and kind of went about our business.”
It was a week before Christmas, and Al McGuire, in the midst of his 13th season as head coach, was 48 years old. His teams had averaged 25 wins a season over the past 10 seasons and made it to the ’74 NCAA Final. His career and his program were in their prime, and he stepped away. It’s hard to imagine now, even for those of us whose basketball memories don’t go back that far, whose only direct recollection of McGuire is of the quirky, refreshingly genuine TV analyst, not the street-smart, unconventional coach. Without ever getting the words out, McGuire—who died in January, 2001, at age 72—told his players the current season would be his last.
And then, as Ellis says, the Warriors (Marquette teams are now known as the Golden Eagles) went about their business. Their season had taken an unpredictable turn, but that didn’t change the goal they’d set before it began: a championship. Marquette finished the ’75-76 season No. 2 behind Indiana—and that Hoosier team went 32-0. “We were second to Indiana, who some say was the best team in the history of college basketball,” says Butch Lee, the hard-driving guard who joined Ellis as an All-American candidate in ’76-77. “So I said, Next year’s gonna be our year.”
“Next year,” interrupted as it was by McGuire’s announcement, became far more difficult than Ellis, Lee or anyone else would’ve guessed. A preseason No. 1 in many publications, Marquette lost seven games during that long, strange winter, and entered the final weekend of the regular season unsure if they’d even make it to the Tournament—then boarded a plane for Ann Arbor to play at No. 3 Michigan. They got the news at halftime—yes, they’d been invited to the Dance—then went out and lost by a point to the Wolverines. And it didn’t matter at all.
“We realized that once we got the bid,” Lee remembers, “we were gonna win that thing.”
The ’76-77 North Carolina Tar Heels faced a different set of obstacles. “I remember somebody sent flowers to the basketball office with a note that read, ‘Carolina is dead.’ You know, like sending flowers to a funeral,” Walter Davis chuckles, remembering how the Heels were written off in midseason after senior center Tommy LaGarde was lost for the year with a knee injury. “After that, I think we lost two games the rest of the way.”
Actually, it was three—but the third didn’t come until the NCAA final. Led by the sweet-shooting Davis, All-American pg Phil Ford and precocious freshman Mike O’Koren, Carolina lost two in a row after LaGarde’s injury, then rolled to 15 straight wins. That run was impressive enough on its own, but all the more so considering both Davis (broken finger) and Ford (hyperextended elbow) were injured in the postseason, and each entered the championship game as damaged goods. As Ford says, “You have to give Coach Smith credit for getting the walking wounded as far as he did.”
Dean Smith was in his 16th season, and like McGuire, he knew his squad had potential. “We were excited about that team,” Smith says. “In December, we were out in Portland to play a real good Oregon team, and we crushed them. I thought, Gee, this team could win a championship.”
When it mattered most, the Jersey kids stepped up. Although they played in different time zones at decidedly different programs for diametrically opposite coaches, they had at least two important things in common: roots, and a knack for big play in big games.
Jim Boylan, Marquette’s starting point guard that season, had spent the previous two years at Division 2 Assumption (MA) College. Mike O’Koren, the smooth, lanky 6-8 forward, started almost immediately at Carolina, averaging 14 and 7 as a rook. What they shared was a Jersey City upbringing—they came up playing ball together just across the river from the Manhattan skyline—and pivotal roles in the ’77 final. How they ended up in that game, wearing opposing colors, is a story in itself.
“We used to get calls for transfers, but we didn’t take them,” Smith tells. “So Boylan called, and I called Al and told him Jim would be calling.”
“It’s ironic how it happened,” adds Hank Raymonds, McGuire’s lead assistant. “I saw Jim in high school, he was terrific. We got the call from North Carolina, and I said, If they can’t use him, we gotta get him, he can play!”
And so he could, starting alongside Lee to form one of the best backcourts in the nation that year. And Boylan wasn’t the only Marquette player with a quirky UNC connection. There was Lee, who played for Puerto Rico (he was born on the island) in the ’76 Olympics because he wasn’t invited to try out for the U.S. Against the Americans, Lee scored 35 points to lead Puerto Rico to a near-upset. But the U.S.—coached by Smith and led by Ford, LaGarde, Davis and ’76 UNC grad Mitch Kupchak—survived 95-94.
And then there’s Ellis, by all accounts a shoo-in for the U.S. squad in ’76, whom Smith called “the smartest forward in college basketball.” As Smith recalls, the U.S hopefuls were asked to run a mile during training camp. When Ellis’s turn came, “He ran one lap and kept running,” Smith laughs. “I didn’t see him again until the championship game.”
Ellis remembers it differently. “I don’t think I’ve told this story before,” he says from his office at Chicago State University, where he’s head basketball coach. As Ellis tells it, he became ill during the run—a combination of grits and eggs in his stomach from breakfast and the heat of a 96-degree day—and couldn’t finish. That, and being homesick after traveling to Brazil for a pre-Olympic tournament, negated Ellis’s excitement about making the squad. “If I had to do it again, I would’ve been on that ’76 Olympic team, would’ve won a gold medal,” Ellis says now. “It’s a big mistake, but it had nothing to do with Coach Smith. He was very fair to me.”
Maybe, but as Davis cracks, “I think he used it as motivation anyway.”
Regardless, there was no shortage of motivation when UNC and Marquette tipped off on March 28, 1977 in front of 16,086 fans at The Omni in Atlanta, GA. Both teams were battle-tested: The Heels won their four previous Tourney games by a total of 13 points, including a one–point win over favored UNLV in the Final Four, while the Warriors survived scares against Kansas State and UNC-Charlotte.
Then there was the drama surrounding McGuire’s last game—and his potential to go out on the highest possible note—all played up heavily during the pregame by NBC’s Curt Gowdy, who intoned, “Al McGuire says goodbye tonight…He’s been a winner all the way, the most quoted, the most controversial and the most colorful college coach in America.” For the game’s first 20 minutes, he also looked like the smartest.
When Ellis picked up his second foul 1:38 into the game, McGuire, loath to go deep into his bench, kept his star forward in the game and protected him by switching defenses from man to zone. Crisis averted—Ellis played the entire half without picking up another foul and had 8 points and 7 boards at halftime. With 15, Lee—a Marbury-esque scoring guard whom NBC’s Billy Packer (clad in a godawful red plaid jacket) called “probably the most powerfully built and explosive guard that’s played college basketball in a long time”—was the leading scorer of the half. But it was a team effort, from the 11-1 run late in the first half to the stifling zone defense that helped hold the injured Davis and Ford to a combined 8 points, that gave the Warriors a 39-27 halftime lead.
From there, it was Smith’s turn to look smart—and he got help from O’Koren. The day before, O’Koren was asked if his 31-point effort against UNLV was a career high. His response: “Yeah, so far.” Laughing about it now, the current Nets assistant says, “It made me come out looking really cocky. I meant, yeah, so far, not like, Yeah, against Marquette I’m gonna get 35. So McGuire’s like, ‘Yeah, the cocky kid from Jersey City.’”
O’Koren had reason to be proud on this night, scoring 8 of the Heels’ first 10 points of the second half. He finished with 14 and a team-high 11 boards—the only double-double of the game—before fouling out in the final 90 seconds. For the moment, though, he had the Heels back in the game, and the UNC took its only lead of the half moments later, when reserve Tom Zaliagiris converted a steal into a layup for a 45-43 edge. Bernand Toone, one of two Marquette reserves to step on the court, tied it a minute later with a jumper. And that’s when the chess match emerged.
“It was sort of a cat-and-mouse game,” O’Koren says, describing the 2-minute, 57-second UNC possession that followed. It wasn’t until Toone’s game-tying basket that Smith went into “four corners”, the clock-chewing set that, before the advent of the shot clock, allowed his squad to hold the ball indefinitely. And when his coach gave the order, O’Koren had the best seat in the house. “I was at the scorer’s table trying to get back into the game, and I’d watch Coach Smith to my right, and Coach McGuire to my left,” O’Koren says, describing the back-and-forth strategizing. “Coach McGuire would say ‘zone,’ then Coach Smith would say, ‘Go four corners, get them out of zone,’ because he wanted to play against them man-to-man. Then when they came out of man-to-man, we’d go into our offense, and Coach McGuire would yell, ‘Back to a zone!’”
Smith successfully used the famous stalling tactic for much of his career, but on this night, it might have backfired. After nearly three minutes, senior backup Bruce Buckley cut toward the left block for a go-ahead layup. It was Buckley’s only shot of the game, and Bo Ellis ate it alive, swatting away any whiff of Carolina momentum. Still, every coach and player involved in the game agreed that Smith’s decision to go to the four corners was the right one. “Dean Smith caught some hell, but he shouldn’t have,” Raymonds says now.
Marquette went into a stall of its own, holding the ball for more than a minute before regaining the lead. Trapped at the top of the key, Ellis saw Boylan cutting toward the basket a half-step ahead of Ford. Boylan caught the bounce pass on his fingertips, pump-faked once under the basket, and threw in a reverse layup for a 47-45 lead with 8:31 left.
Carolina tied in once more on two Davis free throws, but Marquette scored on the next two possessions, and that four-point lead was airtight. For the game, the Warriors hit 23 of 25 from the stripe, including 12 straight in the final 1:29. With Marquette unwilling to miss from the line, and playing before the era of the three-point shot, Carolina was helpless.
In the final seconds of the 67-59 win, Al McGuire sat on the Marquette bench and sobbed. Struggling to check his emotions, spent and relieved and disbelieving all at once, he was barely able to acknowledge Smith when the Carolina coach jogged down the sideline to offer a quick congratulatory handshake. Then, as his players and fans celebrated all around him, he stood up, walked through the frantic crowd and into the locker room, overcome.
Lee, who finished with 19 points, won outstanding player honors and was joined on the All-Tournament team by Ellis (14 points, 9 boards) and junior center Jerome Whitehead, who finished the game with 8 points, 11 boards and 2 blocks. But Boylan might’ve been the real MVP—he helped shut down Ford, scored 14 points on 5 of 7 field goals and 4 of 4 from the line, and hit arguably the games biggest basket. Of the player he passed over a year before, Smith says, “He made some great shots. I thought he was the key.”
UNC was paced by O’Koren and Davis, who followed up a foul-plagued first half by scoring 18 of his game-high 20 points in the second half. Ford, hampered by elbow and Marquette’s D, shot 3 for 10 and finished with 6 points.
The game’s legacy is daunting. In all, 17 of the 21 players who stepped on the floor that night—not counting LaGarde, a ’77 first-rounder—were eventually drafted. The coaching ranks also benefited: Ellis, at Chicago State, while Carolina guard John Kuester, an assistant to fellow UNC alum Larry Brown with the Sixers, joins O’Koren and Suns assistant Boylan on NBA benches. But the real legacies can be traced to the men who coached the games, especially McGuire, whose stunning success over a comparatively short span is all the more intriguing by his unorthodox methods. “Al was a showman, a maverick, this was all a part of his getup. But he lived for the game,” says Raymonds. “Practice, forget about it. We had players tackle him on the floor, fight with him, we used to have a zoo. But when it came time to play…I tell you, he knew what was going on.”
No doubt—and now, 25 years later, so do his players. “After the game, Coach told us that as time goes by, this will be even more significant that it is now,” Boylan says of the game. “And that was absolutely true.”

Original Old School: Rebels Without a Pause

CHN — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 11:30:53 -0700

Time has the tendency to fly by. If your eyes stutter-step, you miss a day. Fall asleep, you miss a month. Get caught up in work, you miss a year. This point was hammered home today, when we—Ben really—came to the realization that it has been just about 20 years since the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels ruled the world, and were owners of an NCAA Championship. That means it’s been 20 years since Larry “Grandmama” Johnson, Greg “The Mouth” Anthony and Stacey “Plastic Man” Augmon held court on the Strip like it was never held before and hasn’t been since. It being March, and our memories needing some jogging, we decided to un-archive this classic from SLAM 50. Let your eyes do the walking. —Tzvi Twersky
by Michael McNulty
Because a passion for basketball flows through his veins, Anderson Hunt boards a plane destined for Saudi Arabia. Somewhere out in the vast desert a franchise posted a sign: Guard Needed. Hooping for a living beats punching a clock, so he deals with the long, grueling flight to a foreign land. And like many of us, he’ll use relaxation techniques to combat a nerve-racking take-off, turbulence and boredom.
No worries. Hunt has his routine down cold. As the immense bird lifts off Detroit soil, he shuts his eyes, leans back in his coach seat and thinks about his younger glory days playing in a desert closer to home—a place from which Hunt’s UNLV crew once ruled college basketball like the mob once ruled Las Vegas.
The Runnin’ Rebels didn’t just beat teams 11 seasons ago. They annihilated opponents with a flurry of athletic talent and sheer intensity. Forget the work-it-around-the-perimeter-and-wait-for-a-good-shot mentality. Booooring. It never would have played in a town that allows slot machines in the john. This team had things to do after the game. Parties to attend. People to see. They wanted to outshoot you, outhustle you, outbreak you and—most importantly—outscore you. The ’89-90 team averaged 93.5 points per game—including 16 games of 100 points or more—while holding opponents to 78.5.
Bordering the infamous Strip, which was less Disney-fied in those days, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas had the perfect attitude to represent its gun-slinging city: flashy, gaudy, high-rolling, glittering, over-the-top basketball. The season started with a win over Loyola Marymount and culminated in Denver with a 103-73 demolition of mighty Duke in the ’90 Championship—the biggest margin of victory in an NCAA title game and quite possibly the most embarrassing loss in Blue Devils history.
The architect behind the delicious madness was Jerry Tarkanian, who—regardless of what you think of him—deserves props for molding a band of recruits from across the country into one of sport’s greatest shows. Forget Wayne Newton or Ol’ Blue Eyes. When the Rebs dazzled the Thomas & Mack Center with their five-man medley, it was the toughest ticket around. This UNLV squad was the original bling-bling team. It showed us winning needn’t be conservative, that it can be fast and furious, sizzling and soulful. And it all began with the man they call Tark.
Depending on who you ask, Tark the Shark is either Tony Soprano, Father Flannigan, or a combination of the two. The king of second chances, he simply can’t turn away a hard-luck case—at least, not one with All-American talent. Still, he probably never received enough credit for winning a startling 83 percent of his games while at Vegas. While Bobby “Bail Bondsman” Bowden is a mythic figure and Bobby Knight’s supporters idolize the General like an actual war hero, the man with sleepy eyes never receives his full coaching due.
You might argue the backup waterboy could have coached three future NBA top-12 picks (Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon and Greg Anthony) to a ring in ’90. Two quick counterpoints. One, have you heard of Michigan’s Fab Five? No ring there. Two, such a comment underestimates Tark’s ability to trust his players and delegate power.
With his familiar moist towel clamped between his teeth, he engineered the Runnin’ Rebs’ 35-5 blitzkrieg through college hoops.
“It started with our general, who was Coach Tarkanian,” says Johnson, the Knick forward who was a junior during in ’89-90. “The way he coached, and his coaching staff, made us what we were. He brought out the best in everybody. He was an excellent player’s coach. Everybody loved him and we were all a team, we were all like brothers.”
Some teams are tight. Some are close. But UNLV enjoyed a bond that never frayed. Every guy interviewed for this story made a family reference when discussing the ’89-90 squad. One big fraternity. Brothers. The fellas. Even the coach couldn’t resist drawing the same analogy.
“That was a great group of guys, a close-knit family,” Tarkanian says from his office at Fresno State. “Greg Anthony was our spokesperson, Larry Johnson outworked everybody in practice and Stacey Augmon was as tough as nails.”
Another key to success: Know your roles. Four guys can’t drop a triple-double every night. Despite its surplus of talented individuals, UNLV perfected the art of suppressing ego and avoiding jealousy.
“We had the type of players who understood the value of being unselfish and the value of just winning,” Johnson says. “We were all pulling for each other. It was a unique opportunity where everyone is on the same page as far as trying to do the right thing, trying not to be selfish, trying to make the right play at all times.”
Where did the stress-free environment originate? Was it luck? Did the five starters—as well as sixth-man specialist Moses Scurry, who was imported from St. John’s—just happen to mesh?
“It was instilled by the coaches,” says Augmon, like Anthony a member of the Portland Trail Blazers. “The games were easier than the practices. For two hours, we drilled. We worked harder than anybody else.”
Augmon, who played high school ball in Pasadena, CA, jokes he may not have attended UNLV if he knew practices would be sweaty, disciplined workouts. But intense practices may have been UNLV’s brilliant secret. While its exterior sparkled with Vegas hype, the team’s interior was comprised of fierce loyalty, a Puritan work ethic and a coaching staff that knew how to extract the most production from each individual. That’s where assistant coach Tim Grgurich emerged as a vital figure in the team’s success. Without him, the Rebels lose their structure.
“Coach Grgurich held us all together,” says Hunt, who started in the backcourt with Anthony. “During timeouts, people would come, sit down, and look at Coach Grgurich. Coach Tarkanian was more of the media guy. As far as keeping us out of trouble, it was Coach Grgurich.”
You want trouble? Walk 100 yards from the Vegas campus and you’ve entered the mecca of mischief. Gambling. Liquor. Drugs. Prostitution. All on one five-mile stretch of pavement. Average college dudes have enough problems avoiding vice in sleepy university towns. Try and imagine how a 20-something male—particularly a star athlete—avoids the Strip’s allure.
Says Hunt: “I only have one regret. It wasn’t a Chapel Hill or a Bloomington or an Ann Arbor. There was a lot of temptation. Las Vegas is not a college town. That’s what I really missed.”
If Grgurich was the one steering the Rebs clear of trouble off the court, he was also the one providing much of the leadership on it. According to Hunt, Grgurich (now a Trail Blazers assistant who doesn’t speak to the media) was the hands-on micro-manager. Tarkanian was the macro-manager, concerning himself with the big picture.
“He was an X’s and O’s guy strictly on defense,” Johnson says of Tark. “On offense he let your natural talent take over.”
Tarkanian’s genius was in dealing with relationships. The guy is revered by his players, and it’s pretty much impossible to find an ex-player who badmouths Tark. The reason seems logical: He’s a father figure. He understands where these kids come from, what situations they faced before arriving in his locker room. From there, he gives them a lifetime supply of second chances. And love.
“He was more than just a coach on the floor. He was a guy you could talk to,” Johnson says. “Not only the number one [guy] but the two, three, four, five guys. Anybody on our team could go and talk to Coach Tarkanian. That was the unique thing about it.”
Tark also dispensed confidence. For instance, he took a timid Stacey Augmon and helped shape him into a force. Known as Plastic Man for his elastic abilities, Augmon arrived at UNLV apprehensive.
“He’s really a personal guy, he’s a motivational guy,” Augmon says. “He makes you believe in yourself. He would say, ‘Stacey, you’re a scorer, you can do it.’ I didn’t believe it at first. But he cares a lot about us.”
Tark also got his team to believe a championship was a realistic goal. “We thought we had as good a chance as anybody,” he says. Don’t let that ho-hum attitude fool you. Behind closed doors, he outlined a title route a year in advance.
Tark knew his team’s motivation to get to Denver started in Denver. In the spring of ’89, UNLV played P.J. Carlesimo’s Seton Hall Pirates at McNichols Arena in the Mile High City. The winner earned a trip to the Final Four in Seattle. Despite the presence of LJ, Augmon, Hunt and Anthony, the Rebs were beaten soundly. Tark told his players to use the loss for motivation. Hunt recalls leaving Denver with the attitude of: “We’ll be back in one year.”
Entering the fall of ’89, Tark looked for the right combinations. He let Anthony, who went around telling people he was a young Republican, handle the ball and run his mouth from tip-off until the final horn. And nobody talked more than Greg Anthony. “After he broke his jaw, he still led the team in technicals,” Hunt laughs. “That was after he got his jaw wired up.”
Meanwhile, LJ spoke more with his team-leading 20.6 points and 11.4 rebounds a game. Though still a starter for the Knicks, Johnson finds himself on the downslope of a long NBA career. Winning a pro ring may never happen. But one thing is certain. Larry Johnson has always kept himself in phenomenal shape—just like at UNLV.
“Before the season started, we were playing a pickup game,” Hunt recalls. “Me and Larry were on different teams. I went up for a rebound, and I thought I had it, but he came right over me and bumped me out of the way. My shoulder hurt for two weeks after that. He was one of those guys where his body is like four percent body fat. It’s cut up. It’s like a Greek god.”
Assisting Johnson was the cagey Augmon, who averaged 14.2 points and 6.9 boards. In addition, an unheralded individual on the title team was David Butler, a 6-10 senior center who, last anyone heard, was playing ball in Cyprus. Butler’s 15.8 points and 7.4 boards were crucial. Meanwhile, Hunt became the Rebels’ second-leading scorer thanks to his speed on the break and silky three-point stroke.
That left Moses Scurry to come off the bench. Despite his omnipresent smile, Scurry was a bulky 6-7 Brooklyn senior who intimidated opponents with nasty shoulders and quick hands. He spelled Butler, Johnson or Augmon and became a solid college player. After going out on top, he never made it in the pros and now works at the Hard Rock Cafe in Vegas. Although he looks back on the season fondly, but says if he had to do it all over again, he never would have left St. John’s.
“I would have been better off as far as longevity and playing time—and self-confidence,” he says now. But that doesn’t mean Scurry doesn’t have warm memories of his time with Tark. “I think about it almost every day,” he admits.
Out of the 40 games they played that season, the ’89-90 Runnin’ Rebels suffered just five losses: to Kansas in the preseason NIT on a neutral court in New York; and to Oklahoma, New Mexico State, LSU, and UC Santa Barbara, all on the road. On the surface, that final defeat looks like bad. But the Gauchos qualified for the NCAA tournament and almost pulled off another regular-season upset of the Rebels when they lost by only two points in Vegas.
It wasn’t the only close call. Despite winning 21 of 22 to finish out the season, the Rebs nearly dribbled the title off their foot with an aorta-gouging 69-67 squeaker over Ball State in the NCAA regional semifinals. Call it an aberration, because UNLV then went on to beat Loyola—which had ridden the emotion of Hank Gathers’ memory all the way to the Elite Eight—131-101 only two days later to earn a Final Four spot.
Finally, it was back to Denver, where the championship seed had been planted a year earlier. The Final Four was played in the cozy confines of 17,000-seat McNichols Arena, a bi-level gym built in the ’70s. Despite excellent sight lines, the antiquated building has since been razed—which is exactly what UNLV did to Kenny Anderson and the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in the semifinals. After a 90-81 run-you-off-the-floor win over Bobby Cremins’s Ramblin’ Wreck, the Blue Devils got next in the Championship Game.
Perhaps using the word “racist” is overly harsh, but there were obvious stereotypes heading into the finals. Duke, which played Bobby Hurley (a total non-factor against the Rebs because of a stomach virus) at point and Christian Laettner in the frontcourt, was a school known for its scholarly background, discipline and upper-crust breeding. UNLV was perceived as the exact opposite. The athletes didn’t care about attending class, right? The Strip and all its evil permeated the entire program. Coach K stood for truth, justice and the American way. Coach Tark was the Vegas rogue who overlooked NCAA rules.
“When they compared us to Duke, we were the bad boys,” Scurry says. “But at the same time, we were people too.”
The preppy academics from the white-collar, high-minded East Coast institution were royal flushed, 103-73, by their slick, high-flying Vegas opponents. Most games contain ebbs and flows, or at least a handful of key moments and squandered opportunities that define the contest, but not this one. UNLV treated Duke like an annoying fly buzzing around the kitchen table. It nonchalantly rolled up the nearest section of newspaper, took aim and swatted the pest with a quick, precise stroke. Splat! Up 57-47 early in the second half, the desert posse cashed in its chips for an 18-0 run over a 2:51 span. Hunt scored 12 during that streak and finished with 29 and the MVP trophy. Duke limped back to Tobacco Road to regroup.
“That’s the best any team has played against us—ever,” Coach K said to reporters following the game. But ask the Rebs about that magical night, and they have trouble explaining it.
Says Tark: “Everything went right.” Hunt says: “I thought we were going to win, but to be truthful I didn’t think we were going to beat them by 30.” And Augmon: “We really surprised ourselves. It was one of those days when everything fell.”
One year later, UNLV could have used another one of those magical days. Following the elation of the championship in Denver, the Rebels didn’t lose a game until the ’91 Final Four. Then, despite having the nucleus back and Tark saying it was “our best team,” the Rebels were ambushed by Duke, which avenged their 30-point Denver debacle. No repeat for a team certain to repeat.
But they’ll always have ’90. They always have the night when all was right. And you know what’s ironic? A guy like Anderson Hunt, who flies all over the globe looking for a game to play, doesn’t miss wearing a UNLV jersey as much as the camaraderie.
“Road trips, going to parties, having fun with all the fellas, going bowling,” Hunt says, listing the memories. “You can’t get your college years back, but you never forget.”

Madness in Retrospect

CHN — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 05:41:25 -0700

Ben and I started talking about this story in 2001, after I interviewed William Paterson University coach Jose Rebimbas for a story on D3 late-bloomer (and future Detroit Piston) Horace Jenkins — “this story” being an old-school feature on the 1989 NCAA title game between Michigan and Seton Hall. Rebimbas was the 12th man on that Seton Hall team, so I knew he had stories for days about that team. It helped that this was the first NCAA final that I really paid attention to. We talked about doing the 15th anniversary story in ‘04, but it didn’t work out; last year, we revisited the idea, and I agreed to knock it out on the 20th anniversary.
You can check the article in the current issue of SLAM, but, as lack of space always makes it tough to tell a story like this in mag form, I figured I’d run more extensive interview stuff here. Ideally, for a story like this, I’d talk to three or four key players and/or coaches from each team and really be able to re-tell the game story through their memories. As it happened, I talked to three or four key guys from Seton Hall, and virtually no one from Michigan. For whatever reason, the Wolverine alumni were next-to-impossible to track down ahead of time; they did a few interviews with Ann Arbor-area media in the days leading up to their reunion in January, but when I tried, through numerous channels — the Michigan sports information department, individual player agents, the NBA Retired Players Association — I got a string of responses that added up to “Good luck with that.”
Coach Steve Fisher, now at San Diego State? Neither he nor anyone else at SDSU returned my emails.
Strangely, considering that they lost the game, the folks at Seton Hall couldn’t have been more helpful. Rebimbas was easy enough to track down — he’s still coaching at William Paterson, one of the better D3 programs in the country. I got John Morton at St. Peter’s in New Jersey, where he’s an assistant coach. I got Andrew Gaze in Australia, where he coaches, does TV commentary, and generally remains a basketball icon. I thought I had PJ Carlesimo, but as he’d recently been fired by the Thunder, my timing wasn’t great. And I actually did get Gerald Greene, sort of; by the time I found him indirectly and he got my message and called me back, it was too late to make the story.
Why the disparity? I don’t really know, but based on my conversations with the Seton Hall guys and what I was told about the Michigan guys, it seems the Pirates got a lot more out of the loss than the Wolverines took from the win. I don’t want to oversimplify this: I know Morton, Greene and the rest of the Seton Hall kids would’ve given anything to lift that trophy 20 years ago, and I know the Rumeal Robinson, Glen Rice and Co. wouldn’t trade that success for anything. But I also know that, to a man, the Seton Hall players talked about how close that team was, and how important is was for them not to bitch and moan about the horrible controversial call at the end that helped decide the game.
On the flip, I know what I read about most of the Michigan players barely being in touch with each other or returning to campus since they graduated, and Robinson’s seemingly bitter quotes about the Fab Five getting more attention than his title-winning squad. All of which is too bad. People should — and hopefully most do — still remember those Wolverines for how they overcame the late-season departure of coach Bill Frieder, and for how Rice’s ridiculous shooting and Robinson’s toughness and clutch FTs overcame a resilient bunch of underdogs from Seton Hall in the final.
So, like I said, check SLAM 127 for the article, and keep reading for longer outtakes from my conversations with Seton Hall’s John Morton, Andrew Gaze and Jose Rebimbas and Michigan reserve Rob Pelinka…
***
John Morton, a senior guard from the Bronx, scored a game-high 35 points and keyed Seton Hall’s second-half rally in the title game. Without Morton, Michigan would’ve won going away.
MORTON: It was such a humble team. Basically, we were a veteran team that didn’t boast or get too excited, over-celebrating or anything. We just accepted the way things were and played to win. Our toughest competition sometimes came in practice. It was 12, 14 humble guys, including the walk-ons. I’ve never experienced another team like that in my career. It’s remarkable in today’s world, with people boasting about what they can do instead of just going out and playing. Most of the teams that came through Seton Hall were like that. There were teams in the Big East that had more flash, and then you had guys from Seton Hall who were more hard workers, more blue collar guys who came in, put their work into the game, and got the most out of it.
Jose Rebimbas hailed from nearby Newark. The stereotypical hardworking walk-on, he acted like a coach on the sidelines, a habit that predicted his future career.
REBIMBAS: We were extremely tight. We looked out for one another at all times. On the court, during practice,, we were at each other’s throats. We wanted playing time, we were deep at every position. Every practice was a challenge, but it was really important that whatever happened on this practice floor did not carry over. Guys had bloody noses, bruises, cuts, but everybody had that one common goal.
We’d all heard the stereotyping: inner-city kids, can’t read, can’t write. We were so far from that stereotype. The following we had, it wasn’t just the success we had, but we were well liked in the campus community. We had a good demeanor. I’m sure if they saw us on the court during practice, they might’ve had a different opinion — we weren’t going to take anything. That toughness played a huge part in our success. Once we got on the court, we weren’t intimidated by anyone. We always felt we were the most physical and mentally toughest team in the country.
MORTON: PJ and his staff did a good job of putting kids together that didn’t worry about individual accomplishments and stuff like that. We just were a good group of kids who played hard and hung out with each other off the court. Now that I’m in coaching — and it’s way different now — but I think we were a different mold of team. We were old school. PJ and them did a good job of keeping us humble, and preparing us for the great run we had.
REBIMBAS: PJ was great. He never let us get too high, and he never let us get too low.
MORTON: Yeah, PJ used to scream. He’d definitely stay on me a lot — he always chose the best players on the team to ride — but he was a great guy, especially off the court. I don’t know if people know that about him. I remember times he started yelling, and we would start laughing, and he would have to laugh, too, because he knew that we knew he was full of crap.
Forward Andrew Gaze had come to the attention of Carlesimo and Seton Hall assistant John Carroll a year earlier, when his Australian club team played exhibition matches against Big East schools. He was offered a scholarship and eventually joined fellow Olympian Ramon Ramos — both played for their countries in the ‘88 Olympics — in time for the ‘88-89 season.
GAZE: PJ is an interesting character, an amazing fella. I thought he was schizophrenic. Knowing him through the recruiting process, and then going through a situation where you actually play for him, it was like, Hold on, what’s going on here? It was completely different. I never knew a coach that could be so emotional, so into it, just riding guys, but be so caring of his players, so committed to looking after his group. Plus, he has this skill — I would die for this skill — where he just remembers everyone. Whether it’s the car parking attendent or the bloke selling tickets, he just remembers everyone’s name.
MORTON: It was a quiet team, but the guy who stands out was definitely Gerald Greene. He was the general — that was the nickname — and he was the mouthpiece who would get us going and keep us flowing. Pookie Wigington was a California guy who liked to talk, he’d kind of fire us up a little bit. But Gerald Greene really took control of the team after I moved to shooting guard my junior year. He would be the guy who’d really get after guys, that voice who spoke out, spoke his mind.
And then Jose was the greatest motivator we had for that team. A guy who put his heart into everything he did, every practice, from the walk-on position. My senior year, he grabbed me before practice and after practice every day to shoot. He definitely helped me. That was just the type of team we had, where Jose could get in your face and be like, “You m-fer’s!” and nobody would take offense.
But everybody was able to fit in. I think a perfect example was Ramon Ramos, who was unable to speak a word of English when he got there from Puerto Rico — not a word — and he was accepted without a problem. And then Andrew Gaze came in senior year, and he was accepted, no question. Would it have been easy to resent him? Easy. Oh, easy. But he’ll tell you there was not a cent of resentment.
GAZE: In all honesty, my first impressions of the environment at Seton Hall weren’t great. The venue on campus was being refurbished, and they actually played at this rickety old ice skating rink. And if you’re familiar with the area around there, it’s not the most inviting environment. And anyway, I was more committed to playing for Australia. But John Carroll was just amazingly persistent. Plus, in Australia, it was difficult for me to play and keep up with my studies. Quite ironically, the major reason I decided to go to Seton Hall was to get through my studies.
Probably the biggest reservation I had about the whole thing was an understanding of the environment I was going into. My experience going in was pretty limited, and driving around Newark in 1986, it doesn’t get your attention for its natural environmental beauty. But once you arrive on campus, get out and walk around the school, it’s beautiful. I remember certain areas off campus, where you’d time the red light so you didn’t have to stop the car. But those initial fears were quickly spelled. You get familiar with it, get to know the guys, and it’s just like anywhere else.
I have to be honest, though: For the first two weeks, I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. They were talking, trying to include me, and I was like, “Mate, you’re gonna have to slow down, I can’t understand you.” But once I got familiar with the accent and the slang, I was into it.
REBIMBAS: We would be upset with Gaze when he didn’t take shots. It was like, “You’re pretty good, it’s OK for you to shoot.” He was mature as a basketball player way beyond any of us at the time, with all his international experience. He really wanted to fit in, and we wanted him to play a larger role. Because of his maturity, he was able to sort of do both. He knew the team belonged to those seniors — Ramon, Gerald, Daryll, and John. He was terrific.
GAZE: My role with the team was a lot different than it had been internationally. I was trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. I knew there were a lot of seniors on the team, and understanding seniority, I didn’t want to be too intrusive. They were very welcoming, I guess because I wasn’t going in there thinking I was the man.
MORTON: On the court, Andrew fit in perfectly with the team that we had. Andrew brought that experience of being poised, being patient, making big shots throughout the year. You had myself, basically known as a slasher up until that senior year, but we were missing that other guy from the three position who could score, and Andrew definitely opened up things for me to penetrate, and for Ramon to get the ball inside. Then it became more of a headache for opponents, because I started making threes.
GAZE: I remember reading up on the team before the season, and expectations were extremely low. Then when I arrived and had the first few informal scrimmages, I’m like, Crikey, this league must be phenomenally good! I’m looking around thinking, We’re very, very good. The predictions and expectations were well off the mark.
REBIMBAS: I remember playing pickup games in September, and there was a sense of quiet confidence, like, Nobody knows about us, but this is our year.
MORTON: The start of the season was pretty impressive for us. I think we won something like 13 games in a row, but it was definitely a turning point when we went to the Alaska Shootout. We beat Utah, Kentucky and Kansas all in one tournament. You lump those names up, those were some pretty dominant teams. We realized right then, we might have a chance to do something here.
Seton Hall opened NCAA Tournament play with wins over Southwest Missouri State and Evansville. Then came a Sweet 16 date with Indiana. The Pirates won by 13.

MORTON: Just knowing that you’re going in and facing a Bobby Knight team was kind of intimidating in and of itself. But we knew they weren’t as dominant as the old Indiana teams. We were confident enough in our defense, and we knew we could stop those guys from scoring. Defense played a big part in our games that year. Everybody just knew, Buckle down, take pride and guard your man. We had a lot of city guys — me, Gerald, Daryll Walker — and whether it was that NYC street toughness or what, we got the job done. In that game, we put the lock down early.
In the Elite 8, Seton Hall beat UNLV by 23.
MORTON: That in itself was amazing. It was like, Now we’re dealing with the Runnin’ Rebels. You’re expecting trash talking, smackdown basketball. But it turned out we handled them pretty easily. There wasn’t much trash talking.
GAZE: Once we got to Denver for the regional, going up against schools like Indiana and UNLV, it was like, Now there’s a realistic chance we could lose. With Indiana, it’s big school, high profile, Bobby Knight, all that, but we did a number on them. We gave them a bit of a touch-up. After that game, given the way that we played, I think there was a level of confidence — expectations were pretty high. I think the margin of victory in both those games was more of a surprise to us than the actual victories.
Seton Hall met Duke in the Final Four. Down 26-8 midway through the first half, they pulled a Lazarus and came back to win — by 17.
REBIMBAS: That game was an awakening, one of the few times we went into a game a little more confident than we should have. They came out, and Danny Ferry had an unbelievable stretch. But PJ called back-to-back timeouts, and there wasn’t a panic. We had PJ, obviously, telling us, “Hey, relax, plenty of time to come back,” and we had vocal leaders like Daryll Walker and Gerald Greene, who refused to let the situation get any worse. There was this sense of, OK, we got knocked down, we’ve been here before, and now we’re back up again. This is our time. We felt every game we went into, at some point, we’d be able to physically and mentally wear down our opponent.
GAZE: Most people thought we’d overachieved to get this far. Then against Duke, we were dead and buried. We started the game and it was deer in the headlights. But Gerald Greene was the pivitol factor. When we were down and out, he really led from the front, had an outstanding game. That was one of the more remarkable wins of the whole season.
MORTON: The only thing I remember about that game, the turning point came when they started talking trash — the trash talking we thought would come from UNLV came from some of the Duke players. You got a couple city kids down, you should’ve let them lay. But that woke us up. Gerald Greene kept us in the first half, and in the second half we just came out with a mentality, like, Let’s punch them in the mouth. New York City players are used to talking trash, and here you are beating us down — let us go down quietly, don’t try to boast about it. We were quiet and humble, but we don’t take that.
REBIMBAS: You know, we all do superstitious things. Once we went down big to Duke, I’m like, What are we gonna do? What’s my contribution? I always sat next to PJ, so decided I’m gonna go to the far end of the bench, cheer us on, start coaching from down here. I stood up the whole time, and obviously we came back and won. So I stood up the whole game in the final, too. I actually had an AP photographer tell me he had a lot of good pictures of me — they were all of my ass.
The title game featured a pair of No. 3 seeds, neither of whom had ever cut down the nets. It was also the first NCAA final in 26 years to go to overtime.
GAZE: We were just riding the wave. I think there was an element of shock about it all — here we are, actually in the final. No one had even heard of Seton Hall. The amount of people that came up to us and had no idea of where the school was — because of that, we got the benefit of being that Cinderella story. We got the support of a lot of people because of that.
We went into that game reasonably confident — on the back of beating Duke, UNLV and Indiana, you start thinking to yourself, Why not? In hindsight, one of the great advantages we had was being away from campus so long, we didn’t get caught up in the hype of it all [playing in the West Regional, the Pirates spent three weeks out West, going from Tucson to Denver, then staying in L.A. before heading to Seattle for the Final Four.] Being on the other side of the country, we didn’t get caught up in the backslapping and hoopla that goes on. Plus, being in L.A., staying in Santa Monica, the weather was great. Being from Australia, snow was something very foreign to me, and the cold of a New Jersey winter took a little bit of getting used to. But that was just PJ’s approach, the way he ran the team, keeping us level-headed and shielding us from all the carrying on.
MORTON: We knew we had a challenge. Looking back at that team, they had six, seven NBA players. You have to start with Glen Rice, who had a great tournament overall, shooting the daylights out of the ball. Then you had Rumeal Robinson, built like a running back playing point guard. But Glen Rice was the man on that team. You had those big guys, [Loy] Vaught and [Terry] Mills, setting screens and getting him open. They knew Glen Rice was the man, and every thing else would trickle down. You have to be impressed with the way that team stuck together after the coaching change.
Rob Pelinka, now an NBA player agent who reps stars like Kobe Bryant and Carlos Boozer, was a freshman reserve for the ‘89 Wolverines.
PELINKA: Glen was the clear leader of that team. He was really tough and always worked really hard — and, obviously, he had an unbelievable stroke.
GAZE: It was a tough game for me. I’d come off a pretty decent run of games, and then I had the unenviable task of trying to get at Glen Rice for most of the game. I think I did a spectacular job of holding him to 30-something (laughs)
MORTON: I think my first half was pretty decent, but I missed some shots. I had maybe three games my senior year where struggled in first half but came out in a zone in the second half. But not like at that stage.
GAZE: Offensively, I wasn’t particularly involved, didn’t get too many good looks. But John Morton had one amazing game. He was on fire, took charge in the crisis. We did a good job identifying when John was on, and he delivered in spades. He had an incredible season, and an even more amazing game.
MORTON: An overtime game that came down to foul shots. How much more exciting can that be?
REBIMBAS: We heard the whistle, and it was hard to tell. We really weren’t sure what happened. Being in the coaching profession now, you always want players to decide the outcome. We had the opportunity to do that earlier in overtime. I have not watched the play. I watch the game until that point, and then I just shut it off. I figure one day I’ll sit down and see what really happened.
GAZE: It was an unfortunate situation for them to win with a dubious call.
MORTON: It took me probably 10 years before I watched the game — and another two or three before I could watch the end of it. Now when it comes on, everyone always calls up, “Hey, the game’s on.” I’m not turning it on, though. I have it on DVD.
I actually got a chance to play with Glen in Miami. He admitted there was no foul on the last play (laughs). I felt good about that. He finally admitted, “Yeah, we got lucky there.”
REBIMBAS: Obviously looking back, it was a great disappointment not to have been able to finish off what we started. But to sit back and watch one of the most incredible displays of scoring by John Morton, and then on the other side to watch Andrew Gaze sacrifice his offensive output to defend clearly the most outstanding player in the tournament in Glen Rice, those two things were pretty special.
GAZE: I learned a lot from the reaction of the team following the loss. People could be very bitter, point a finger, up in arms about a dubious call, but in all honesty, the way that PJ handled that situation, and the school and everyone involved, it was just incredible class. In PJ’s postgame speech, never was that call highlighted. I think that takes tremendous class and courage. That’s one of the things I’m most proud of being involved with that team.
REBIMBAS: On the court, after the loss, we sort of huddled one last time as a group, and we knew that was the last time that group of guys was going to huddle up that way. We just had Pookie and Gerald speak and say, “We did a great job, remember that, it was awesome, we love you.” I think once we left the floor, we left the game behind us. We sort of said, “We had our chance, it wasn’t meant to be.” I think for us to come out of that huddle and complain about a particular play or call would’ve defeated that specific moment, which was, let’s remember that we got here. PJ never came in and said anything. It was something that was understood. All year long, we never made any excuses. It was who we were.
MORTON: PJ always spoke to us about carrying ourselves correctly off the court. I think we did a good job of not blasting the refs in the papers or anything. We were definitely upset and angry, but at the same time, it was a blessing to have played in that game, it was a great feat. We took these guys to the brink of winning the national championship. So it felt great in that sense — along with the anger of how the game was decided. Then we got back to New Jersey and we had one of the biggest parades ever in South Orange. The next day, you weren’t sure that we lost. (laughs) People in New Jersey really did a great job bringing us home in style and making us forget we lost that game, that we were still champions in their mind. That felt pretty great.
REBIMBAS: We get on a plane, traveling home from the West Coast, feeling disappointed for our fans who had made the trip. We almost felt guilty, heads down at times. But man, when we walked through that corridor at the airport and had the opportunity to see people cheering for us, then to be escorted by state police, then get back on campus — we were just dumbfounded. There were thousands and thousands of people. We were just stunned. We had a pep rally, we had a parade — for like a two-week period, it seemed like the world had stopped to honor us. And we soaked up every minute of it.
MORTON: Back in those days, you didn’t really think about getting to the Final Four. It was rough going my first two years at Seton Hall, and we were just happy making it to the to the NCAAs my junior year. But I think that was a turning point, and a great experience. We wanted to get back to the NCAAs, but we didn’t really expect to get to the Final Four. The seniors on that team, we came in, took our lumps our freshman and sophomore years, then had the blessing of our senior year. We came to Seton Hall to help rebuild a program, and we went from cellar of the Big East to the national championship game in four years. It was a great way to go out, regardless of the outcome.