Really enjoyed Greg Garber's piece just now on ESPN's championship game preview show on the 1989-1991 UNLV team. The 1989-90 team delivered the most impressive championship game of my lifetime, demolishing Duke, 103-73. The 1990-91 team that lost to Duke in the national semifinal remains the greatest team I have ever seen.
That UNLV team was undefeated going into the Final Four when they met Duke in a rematch from the 1990 championship game. Though the Blue Devils were a No. 2 seed in that tournament, I maintain that I was never more surprised by the outcome of any NCAA Tournament game than Duke beating UNLV. Hindsight has probably changed how we all view that game, given that Duke not only won the 1991 championship game but also repeated in 1992 in the early stages of the most dominant run in college basketball of the last 25 years.
Here's another question for you: have we ever seen a more star-studded college basketball rivalry or series or whatever you want to call it than Duke-UNLV in those two years? Those Vegas teams had Larry Johnson, Greg Anthony, Stacy Augmon and Anderson Hunt in both games. Duke had Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley, Brian Davis and Thomas Hill in both games, and added Grant Hill and Antonio Lang for the rematch. Both of those teams were like rock star teams, both legendary in college basketball beyond just their championship hardware.
With all the early entries to the NBA and the one-and-done rule, will we ever see a matchup of two such high-profile teams in the tournament ever again? The closest we came was probably the 2005 North Carolina-Illinois national championship yet neither of those teams had the star power of Duke and Vegas. In fact, it wasn't even close.
Here are some highlights from UNLV's 1990 championship season:
And here are is WRAL-TV's newscast after Duke's shocking upset win in '91:
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