No Way for San Jose: UNLV Wins, 94-69

Nevada Las Vegas finished going through the motions of another Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. tournament Saturday. The Rebels can afford to do that. In the PCAA, their motions are faster, higher and more productive than those of anybody they play.

It’s not even close, and it wasn’t in Saturday’s championship game. The Rebels pressed and pressured San Jose State right out of the Forum, running away with a 94-69 win and their third straight PCAA tournament title, this victory coming before 11,681 fans. And they did it without the player generally responsible for orchestrating an offense that, statistically at least, is the best in college basketball.

Point guard Mark Wade, the nation’s leader in assists, suffered a sprained knee in Friday’s semifinal win over Cal State Fullerton and had to pull up a chair and sit a few seats down from Coach Jerry Tarkanian in the final. Tarkanian found out early Saturday morning that Wade would be unable to play.

“It ruined my breakfast,” Tarkanian said. “When we found out Mark couldn’t play, I felt legitimately sick about this game.”

But as valuable as Wade is to the Rebels, he was scarcely missed against San Jose State. There are players on Tarkanian’s bench that some coaches would build a team around, and he simply put some of that depth to work. Gary Graham moved into the starting lineup at one guard spot, off guard Freddie Banks moved out to play the point and the Rebels proceeded to blow out a PCAA opponent for the third straight game.

Las Vegas’s victories in this tournament came by an average of more than 30 points.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever had a team play three games like this,” said Tarkanian, whose Rebels have a 33-1 record.

Banks, the tournament’s most valuable player, had 6 assists and a game-high 20 points. The Rebels, maybe the nation’s leading beneficiaries of the three-point rule, made 11 of 23 shots from three-point range. They outscored San Jose State in the first half, 54-27, contained talented Spartan guard Ricky Berry, who scored 19 points, and forced the Spartans into committing a season-high 26 turnovers. Basically, they made another decent PCAA team look indecent.

“We’re not nearly as bad as we played today,” San Jose State Coach Bill Berry said. “We’re a pretty good basketball team, but they just took us right out of everything we tried to do. Some of it was really good pressure, some of it was self-induced.

“I don’t know who some of our guys were passing to. It seemed like they were trying to get assists for the other team.”

The Spartans (16-14) had committed 16 turnovers by halftime, helping Las Vegas along on a few of its familiar scoring spurts. The Rebels outscored San Jose State, 14-2, in the last six minutes of the first half. Five minutes into the second half, the Rebel fans began stirring in their seats. Their team’s lead had been cut to 21.

Tarkanian was able to sit back and enjoy the show most of the second half. When it was over, a couple of his players gave him the Gatorade treatment in front of the team’s bench, drenching his short-sleeved shirt and forcing him to borrow a player’s warm-up jacket during the post-game awards ceremony.

Tarkanian dried off and began turning his attention to next week. “Now we’ve gotta get ready for the tournament . . . the big tournament he said.”

The Rebels are expected to be the top-seeded team in the NCAA West Regionals and will open the tournament either Thursday or Friday in either Tuscon or Salt Lake City. Tarkanian was asked if his “buddies” at the NCAA would stack the West with tough teams to make it harder for the Rebels to reach the Final Four.

“I don’t think that’s right because that wouldn’t be fair,” he said with a grin. “And I know they would never do anything unfair.”

Wade will be examined when the Rebels return to Las Vegas, but he’s expected to be ready to play next week. Without him Saturday, though, the Rebels stayed in motion.

PCAA Tournament Notes

Las Vegas’ Freddie Banks was joined on the all-tournament team by teammates Armon Gilliam and Jarvis Basnight. Also selected were San Jose’s State’s Ricky Berry, Henry Turner of Cal State Fullerton and Brian Vaughns of UC Santa Barbara. . . . Berry’s 19 points in the championship game gave him a school-record 546 for the season, breaking the mark set by Chris McNealy in 1983. . . . Cal State Fullerton Coach George McQuarn a Las Vegas assistant in 1976-77, the last time the Rebels reached the Final Four, said of the Rebels’ domination of the PCAA: “I like to equate it with the old UCLA situation when Wooden was there. Most of the coaches in the conference think they can catch up, but as long as Tark’s there, I don’t think it’ll happen. They’re on a different level. Their goal is to win the NCAA championship. For the rest of us coaches, our goal is to win the PCAA championship.”