Rebel Coach Has His Eye on Title : Basketball: UNLV’s Tarkanian sees ‘a legitimate chance’ after his team disposed of Loyola Marymount to advance to the Final Four.

The UNLV Runnin’ Rebels, fresh from an “awesome” win over Loyola Marymount, have a “legitimate chance” to win a coveted national title that has long-eluded them, coach Jerry Tarkanian believes.

“This year we really have a legitimate chance,” Tarkanian said, wandering in a daze through an airport lobby jammed with thousands of boisterous fans.

“They were so awesome, they were just beautiful,” Tarkanian said, hours after his club had disposed of Loyola Marymount, 131-101, to advance to college basketball’s Final Four for the second time in four seasons.

Tarkanian, whose No. 2-ranked Rebels carry a 33-5 mark into Saturday’s match-up with Georgia Tech, was already starting to fret about the Yellow Jackets.

“They’ve got three great, great players, and they’ve got two good kids inside,” Tarkanian said of Tech, a 93-91 winner over Minnesota Sunday.

Tech’s “three great, great players”--Kenny Anderson, Dennis Scott and Brian Oliver--have been dubbed Lethal Weapon 3, a play on the popular movie. The trio scored 89 of Tech’s 93 points Sunday.

Anderson, in particular, bothers Tarkanian.

“He’s practically impossible to pressure,” Tarkanian said.

“Their press will be one of the toughest problems for us to handle,” Tarkanian said.

Tarkanian, walking down a concourse at McCarran International Airport jammed with thousands of chanting fans, turned around and began walking backward, watching the mob engulf his players who had trailed him off the airplane.

“We were good today, weren’t we?” Tarkanian said, a smile creasing his usually somber face. “We were just awesome. The kids played just the way we wanted them to play. They were so focused.”

Do his Rebels have what it takes to win it all after trips to the Final Four in 1977 and 1987? They lost both times in the opening game.

“I hope so, I really hope so.”

Can they maintain the intensity that transformed Sunday’s predicted dogfight into a rout?

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. I hope so. The kids are really focused right now. They’re playing their hearts out.”

“We’re playing harder than we’ve played all season,” said Larry Johnson as autograph seekers shoved dollar bills, scraps of paper and Rebel memorabilia at the all-America forward. “But every one’s going to be tough from here on. There’s so much luck involved now. We’re just going to take it game by game. We’re just going to play our hearts out.”

Johnson, the Rebels’ do-it-all star, will need help from the outside at Denver. He didn’t get it Friday night and the Rebels escaped with a 69-67 victory over unheralded Ball State that went down to the final second.

They did get it Sunday with guards Anderson Hunt scoring 30 points, Greg Anthony 21 and Stacey Cvijanovich getting 10. Stacey Augmon hit 33 and Johnson added 20.

Tarkanian had been hounding Augmon, the club’s top defense player and a member of the Olympic team, to kick it up a notch in practice last week.

He played a major role in the semifinals at Oakland, hitting clutch baskets each time Ball State and Loyola Marymount would make a run at the Rebels.

At the airport Sunday night, Anthony was surrounded by a cluster of fans.

“We played the game we wanted,” he said. “We broke their press and we played good defense.”

Georgia Tech will pose some major problems, Anthony said.

“They’re great on the perimeter and they’re great inside,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a great game.”

Anthony, who played the final third of the season with his jaw wired shut after breaking it in two places while driving for a basket, said the reward had been worth the pain.

“It’s been a long year,” he sighed, signing the T-shirt of a teen-ager. “But we persevered. Today made it all worthwhile.”

The Rebels played two-thirds of their season with one or more players out of the lineup because of injuries, illness, academics or a series of suspensions by the NCAA for failure to pay incidental bills at hotels where the team stayed last season.

Two players were also suspended, one for one game and one for three, because of a fight after the Utah State game here last month. Seven UNLV players and three from Utah State were placed on probation for the remainder of the season by the Big West Conference because of the fight.