Will Tarkanian Go Out a Winner? : College basketball: Despite the loss of five starters from Final Four team, schedule gives UNLV coach a chance at 20 victories in his final season.

The two constants in the UNLV basketball program for nearly two decades promise to hold steady once again in Jerry Tarkanian’s final season with the Runnin’ Rebels.

A powderpuff schedule means UNLV should again win at least 20 games and be nationally ranked, despite the loss of all five starters from the team that won the national championship two years ago and was undefeated last year before losing to Duke in the national semifinals.

And Tarkanian will again be mired in controversy, this time not only with the NCAA, but also with university officials whom his supporters claim conspired to force him out of basketball.

The biggest difference for these Runnin’ Rebels may be that after years in the spotlight, they will be nearly invisible on the national scene. That’s the result of a one-year ban from live television and postseason play that was the final resolution of a battle between Tarkanian and the NCAA dating to 1977.

But this year’s team has at least one goal. If the team can finish at least 19-9 over the 28-game regular season, it will ensure Tarkanian departs as the winningest coach by percentage in college basketball history.

“We’re not going to win by 40 points every game, but we’ll win a few games,” said Evric Gray, a reserve forward last season and a projected starter this year. “It’s going to take a while. We don’t have any Staceys, Larrys or Gregs anymore.”

Indeed they don’t.

While Larry Johnson toils for the Charlotte Hornets, who made him the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, fellow first-round pick Stacey Augmon plays for the Atlanta Hawks and Greg Anthony is earning millions with the New York Knicks.

The retooled version of the Runnin’ Rebels does feature 7-foot Elmore Spencer, potentially one of the better centers in the country, and a group of promising recruits and former reserves who are talented but inexperienced.

Tarkanian refused to return repeated phone calls from The Associated Press to discuss his team. The AP broke the story last summer that Tarkanian would resign after this season because of an uproar over the publication of pictures showing UNLV players in a hot tub with convicted points shaver Richard “The Fixer” Perry.

After an annual intersquad public scrimmage this week, though, Tarkanian said he was pleased with the way his team was coming together.

“We’ve come a long way in a week,” he said. “We played a hell of a lot better than I thought.”

Earlier, Tarkanian had said the lack of superstars will force him to play more people this year.

“We really don’t have a first team,” he said. “Last year wasn’t even close between our starters and our second five. But this year, it’s really close.”

The 61-year-old Tarkanian will coach his last game at UNLV on March 3.

Since 1968, when he barged onto the major college scene by going 23-3 in his first season at Long Beach State, Tarkanian is 599-120, an .833 winning percentage. His record in 18 seasons at UNLV is 483-103.

The only time Tarkanian came close to a losing season was 1980-81, when a team hit hard by probation went 16-12.

The winning percentage doesn’t figure to drop this season, thanks to a schedule that has a Nov. 30 home date against Louisiana State and a Dec. 14 road game at Missouri, but little else.

UNLV doesn’t play outside the weak Big West conference after Jan. 1, finishing with 18 conference games.

More difficult could be the bitter split between UNLV administrators and the basketball program, a simmering feud that broke into the open when the school secretly videotaped a preseason conditioning class for what it contends were violations of NCAA rules against early practice.

Tarkanian, whose supporters believe he was forced into resigning by UNLV president Robert Maxson and recently resigned athletic director Dennis Finfrock, issued a statement claiming the university was not trying to avoid violations with the taping “but hoping to find one.”

“Perhaps this latest incident will help alert and explain to Las Vegas and the country what the UNLV basketball team has had to endure,” Tarkanian said.

Longtime assistant coach Tim Grgurich, who with two other coaches taught the class, was even more critical of the administration.

“The university is not interested in (NCAA) compliance, but in destroying people,” Grgurich said.

Tarkanian could also conceivably get a going-away present from the NCAA about the time he coaches his final game in the form of additional sanctions stemming from a three-year NCAA probe into the basketball program.

The NCAA sent UNLV a letter of inquiry detailing 29 possible violations last year. Some of the alleged violations stem from the recruitment of former New York City prep star Lloyd Daniels, who Perry reportedly helped bring to UNLV.

The case has been bogged down by attorneys for Tarkanian and other coaches, who want the NCAA to follow Nevada’s new due process law in determining any violations against their clients.