Tark Throws In Towel

Weary of turmoil--and worn out by more losses this season than anyone could have expected--Jerry Tarkanian retired as Fresno State’s basketball coach Friday at 71.

“You know what is so painful--and unless you’re a coach, you don’t really understand this--is, you’re in the hotel room and getting ready to go to the game ... and you figure, ‘God, we’re the underdog,’” Tarkanian said.

“My last 10 years at UNLV, we lost 33 games. This year I lost 15. You figure that one out.”

Tarkanian was almost as famous for his battles with the NCAA as he was for the running, pressing Nevada Las Vegas teams that went to four Final Fours and won the 1990 NCAA title.

But in the end, the bald, droopy-eyed coach known as Tark the Shark leaves behind a legacy as one of the greatest coaches not yet in the Hall of Fame--an honor that has eluded him in no small part because of persistent NCAA recruiting allegations and his players’ legal scrapes.

Tarkanian ends his career with 778 major-college victories after losing to Temple in the National Invitation Tournament on Wednesday, the final game of a 19-12 season he had once hoped might take him to one last Final Four.

After four decades, Tarkanian finally had enough.

Few coaches have ever outdone him.

The only ones who won more Division I games are Dean Smith--who holds the record of 879--Adolph Rupp, Bob Knight and Lefty Driesell.

His winning percentage--the highest in history when he left UNLV in 1992--ranks fifth at .794, behind Clair Bee, Rupp, John Wooden and Roy Williams.

Tarkanian ended his career by returning to his alma mater, taking Fresno State to the NCAA tournament twice in his seven seasons at the school.

But he will be remembered for the days at UNLV when Runnin’ Rebel games began with indoor fireworks and drew ritzy fans to courtside seats known as Gucci Row.

“He had great athletes, they loved to run, and defensively no one got kids to work any harder, I don’t think, than Tark did,” said Arizona Coach Lute Olson, a rival for most of their careers after taking over a Long Beach State program Tarkanian had left behind, on probation, in 1973.

Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski--the opposing coach in two of the defining games of Tarkanian’s career--called Tarkanian’s record amazing.

“He was consistently excellent for a long period of time,” Krzyzewski said. “In the late ‘80s, they were one of the two or three to beat.

“Jerry had consistent high levels of success because his teams played hard defensively. He’s one of the truly remarkable defensive coaches.”

Duke was on the losing end of the biggest margin in NCAA championship game history in 1990--a 103-73 UNLV victory led by Larry Johnson, Greg Anthony and Anderson Hunt, the most valuable player of that Final Four who never made it in the NBA.

The next year, in one of the great upsets in Final Four history, Duke beat an undefeated UNLV team that had won its games by an average margin of almost 28 points, defeating the Rebels in a semifinal game.

NCAA scrutiny accompanied Tarkanian nearly his entire career.

“I always say that I shouldn’t talk about the NCAA and I always do,” he said. “They’ve been my tormentors my whole life. It will never stop.”

The NCAA tried to suspend Tarkanian for two years in the late 1970s, but he never sat out, taking his fight to the U.S. Supreme Court before losing.

UNLV eventually struck a deal with the NCAA to allow the Rebels to defend their 1990 title, accepting ineligibility for postseason play in 1992 as punishment for the alleged recruiting violations that dated to 1977.

But after a picture of three former UNLV players in a hot tub with convicted sports fixer Richard Perry was published in 1991, Tarkanian agreed to leave UNLV after the 1992 season--an agreement he unsuccessfully sought to rescind.

In 1993, UNLV was put on three years’ probation for alleged violations involved in Tarkanian’s recruitment of Lloyd Daniels.

Tarkanian got a small measure of satisfaction in 1998 when the NCAA settled a decades-old lawsuit by paying him $2.5 million.

Though Tarkanian’s legacy is linked to Las Vegas, he had made his mark in Southern California much earlier.

At Riverside City College, he won three consecutive state junior college titles in the 1960s before moving to Pasadena City College, where he won another.

Long before he became known for pressure man-to-man defense, he was known for a ferocious zone.

“His zone in those days was the toughest thing I ever saw,” said Bill Mulligan, who came up through the high school and junior college coaching ranks with Tarkanian and coached against his UNLV teams when he was at UC Irvine. “As far as how he’s changed the game, it’s hard to imagine that prior to UNLV, Tark was a 1-2-2 zone man, slow it down. Then he got to Vegas and it became a track meet.”

Mulligan, who considers Tarkanian a friend, wonders at some of the players Tarkanian accepted. The behavioral problems seemed to grow worse during his time at Fresno State.

“His philosophy is, ‘There are no bad boys,’” Mulligan said. “He really feels that way. He’s very sincere about that. He’s not a phony. With the guys he gets, I didn’t think he needed to do that. I thought he could get a better class of kids.”

Speculation about possible replacements includes UC Irvine Coach Pat Douglass, Brigham Young Coach Steve Cleveland and UCLA assistant Jim Saia.

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Rebel With A Record

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TARK FACTS

* Holds a winning percentage of .794, fifth all-time.

* Had 778 major-college victories.

* Became the eighth coach to reach the 750-victory mark at the major college level, defeating UTEP 108-56 on Jan. 25, 2001.

* Coached 42 players who were drafted by NBA teams, 12 first-round selections.

* Led three schools to 20-victory seasons. At each school, Tark recorded 20 wins in his first year.

* Led UNLV to the NCAA title in 1990 (the Rebels defeated Duke, 103-73, posting the largest winning margin in NCAA championship game history).

* Averaged 25.3 victories a season during his 30-year major-college coaching career.

* Led UNLV to top-10 finishes in wire-service polls nine times (1976, 1977, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1990, 1991, 1992).

* Won 20 games or more for 17 consecutive seasons and 29 of 31 seasons as a Division I coach.

* His 990 collegiate coaching victories are the most, counting all divisions.

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Source: Fresno State and Times wire services