Las Vegas Wraps Up PCAA Regular-Season Title

Nevada Las Vegas clinched the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. regular-season championship Thursday night--which ranks somewhere with the sun rising in the morning, or a traffic jam on the San Diego Freeway.

Coach Jerry Tarkanian’s Runnin’ Rebels ended another PCAA non-drama by beating Cal State Fullerton, 74-64, in front of 19,246 spectators in Thomas and Mack Center.

The victory clinched UNLV’s fifth straight PCAA title. This is the Rebels’ fifth season in the conference. You want parity? Look elsewhere.

Moral victories were all Cal State Fullerton Coach George McQuarn really expected when he brought his team to Las Vegas to play the top-ranked team in the country.

Earlier in the season, McQuarn had said it was his team’s goal to win 10 of its last 11 games. This was the one he had excluded from the win column on the basis of realism.

As anticipated, the Titans left with a loss that snapped a five-game winning streak. But there were a few minor victories in defeat.

Fullerton outscored the Rebels, 13-3, over the first six minutes of the second half to take a 43-38 lead and make UNLV followers a little uneasy.

The Titans held Rebel guard Freddie Banks, who entered the game averaging 20.4 points per game, to 11 and put enough defensive pressure on the Rebels to make them shoot a season-low 38% from the field.

Guard Richard Morton and forward Henry Turner had 20 points each for the Titans (6-7, 13-9).

But Armon Gilliam had 24 points and 9 rebounds and Mark Wade contributed 14 points and 10 assists to lead UNLV (13-0, 25-1) to their 10th straight victory. It was one Tarkanian was quite pleased to get.

“They’re one of the best teams in the country right now,” said Tarkanian, exercising his right to postgame hyperbole. “I told the kids before the game that they’re as good as Oklahoma. I sincerely believe that.”

Tarkanian said he had feared the Titans as much as any team on UNLV’s schedule after the Runnin’ Rebels survived a late Fullerton rally for a 73-65 victory Jan. 19 in Titan Gym. “God, they have some great athletes,” he raved.

McQuarn, once a Tarkanian assistant, was well aware that his former boss was talking up the Titans in the days leading up to the rematch.

“Jerry Tarkanian is telling those people that the Fullerton program has the best chance of anybody in the conference of beating UNLV,” McQuarn said earlier this week. “Jerry’s like a God in that town. Whatever he says, those people believe.”

But, despite the fact that the then-ailing Titans played UNLV close in January, McQuarn didn’t enter the Thomas and Mack Center with high expectations.

The Rebels are 58-2 in their shiny, home arena since it opened in 1983. A UNLV game is as much a Vegas attraction as a show on the strip, and the large crowds enjoy being entertained.

“Their crowd does the same thing to their kids that our crowd does to our kids,” McQuarn said, “except the numbers go from 4,000 to 18,000.”

PCAA STANDINGS

Conference All Games W L W L Pct Nev. Las Vegas 13 0 25 1 .962 San Jose St. 7 6 11 11 .500 CSLB 7 6 12 13 .480 UCSB 6 6 11 10 .524 CS Full. 6 7 13 9 .591 N. Mexico St. 6 7 12 12 .500 Pacific 6 7 10 12 .455 UC Irvine 6 8 11 12 .478 Utah St. 5 7 12 12 .500 Fresno St. 2 10 7 16 .304