The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Howard Bryant on Duke vs UNLV 1991: The Upset That Changed College Basketball | 03.31

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

On Time Machine Tuesday, Bomani Jones and Howard Bryant go back to the 1991 Final Four and the stunning upset that turned Duke into college basketball’s ultimate villain. From Jerry Tarkanian’s renegade UNLV program and Larry Johnson’s rock-star Runnin’ Rebels to Christian Laettner’s rise and Coach K’s defining moment, they unpack the racial, cultural, and class tensions that made this more than just a game. They revisit how UNLV “blackened” the sport, why Duke was seen as the clean-cut “Southern Ivy,” the NCAA’s war on Tark, Prop 48 and Prop 42, and why this loss hit so hard for Black America. Plus: was it really fixed, or did Duke just finally stand up to the bully? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time, a wave original. My name is Beaumani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. It is Time Machine Tuesday.

Got my man Howard Bryant on with us, and we are going to look back on what, quite honestly, and I don't even really feel bad about saying these terms, you know, putting it in these charms, but was a really sad day for Black America. And it was when Christian Laytoner, Coach Kay, Bobby Hurley, and Elm, yeah, Grant Hill, you get you, you, you're in the NIM part of it. You had really, you know, made your mark quite so much yet. They defeated UNLV in the national semi-final round of the NCAA tournament 35 years ago. It is as crazy as it sounds, considering it was Duke, for those of you who can't imagine this,

it is maybe the biggest basketball upset of my lifetime in the NCAA tournament. You can have like Villanova Georgetown on this list, but this was a huge shock when it happened. It was a cultural touchstone moment when it happened, and I'm still not over it. But first, Howard, I feel like, you know, we like to set the scene on the, these things to get people to understand a little bit about, you know, for those who weren't there, some of the context of it. And I think this is truly fair to say that there were no two programs in college basketball less like one another in 1991 than Duke and UNLV, right? Like they're both kind of relatively nouveau-rease because UNLV had a claim to be a legitimate power at that point, right? Like

1991 is their third final four or maybe the fourth, but Tarkhanian takes the job in the 70s and UNLV is a team you got to think about all the time at a school that literally just popped up out of nowhere in the desert. And they decided they wanted to have a basketball program to make to get attention to the school. And that worked. Then you had Duke, which had been a strong program. They, you know, went to Final Fours in the 1970s, championship game in 1978, kind of fell off. But Mike Shoevsky turned it into something different. In 1991, they by then have been to five final, that's their fifth Final Four in the previous.

Six years. UNLV, though, they had different boys that Duke has. That's a fair way to put it. That's a very fair way to put it. They were, it's fascinating when we think about what that time period was because there were so many premises that no longer apply. And that's why this game was so important, this idea, even in 1991, 35 years ago, that there was something elevated about college basketball.

There was something legitimate about college basketball. There was something aspirational about college basketball. It wasn't just a sport. It was still under that pipeline of the molding of young men, the pathway to something better, even if you weren't going to be a professional athlete, that there was some form of nobility to the sport. And of course, whenever you have that,

now you start bringing up all the socioeconomic stuff. You start bringing in who gets to play. You start bringing in, you know, the elite versus the street teams and all that. And UNLV really was, to me at least, that first team where you were like, are any of these guys eligible to be admitted into a university without basketball? Without basketball? This is a real touchstone moment. This is the, and especially against the team like Duke, where, you know, where these guys are supposed to, you know, they're the elite citizens in addition to being basketball players. They, you know, they're the, they're the leaders. And this was the first, I mean, obviously Georgetown was the first one. Georgetown was the first team of my lifetime when you start thinking about when did you start watching college basketball. Georgetown was the first one where like, that was Black America's team. You know, when it came to, okay, Who's wearing the starter jackets?

UNLV was second. Yeah, and it's funny because John Thompson had a clear mission at Georgetown of, I'm going to get people into Georgetown that wouldn't get into Georgetown otherwise, right? And that's not to say that they can't perform at Georgetown. But he was, and I think the university, I've not read the particulars on this, but I think that they would admit this to a degree that I think that Temple would admit this, which was they let John Thompson and John Cheney do a little bit of their, cultural outreach, right?

That was their giveback, was this basketball team. And they created a brand that, as we've talked about many times, I grew up thinking that Georgetown was an HBCU. So did I. I don't know why I didn't think Temple was in HBCU because they had volleyball lines, but with on the court. But with those coaches and those teams, I really thought that those were black schools. Like, but there was, there was a different.

Temple was way more black than Georgetown. or you walk on Temple's campus, you saw black students as well. The thing about Georgetown was when you walked on Georgetown's campus, the only black people you saw was a basketball team. Yeah, and that's wild because all I knew about Georgetown was the basketball team, right? 100%. But their mission was a little different, right? Jared Tarkhanian at UNLV, is it fair to say that, I don't know,

to call them the first renegade program is maybe going too far, because there's always been programs that played a little loose with it. It was a program in the image of Las Vegas in the sense that the story that goes basically, that D'Arcanian was the coach at Long Beach State. And that's where he realized that playing fair was for suckers. Yeah, he was Calipari before Calipari. Yeah, but he looked over at UCLA and could see how the sausage is being made over there. Yep.

And he was like, brother, what are we talking about? Right? So he takes this job at UNLV, and I contend, just about every college basketball program is as discerning as it has to be to get to players that they want to have. You can look at the players that John Calipari had at Kentucky. They are not the same as the players that he was playing at Memphis and not the same as the players that he was playing when he was at UMass, right? The top-notch programs, I'll use this phrasing, don't have to take nearly as many chances. Jerry Tarkadian, that was all the chances, baby. They were taking them all. And what I always

thought interesting about him is he was also doing it within the idea and paradigm of, I am using college sports to improve their lives, which is incontrovertibly true was what was going, you know, was something that he did. These guys did wind up going to college and going to, you know, going to places they would not have gone to otherwise, if not for him. But nobody was running a father Flanagan operation, quite like Tark was. And especially the hypocrisies of it. I think one of the things that I actually really did sort of appreciate about Tark was when you're at Long Beach State and you're watching UCLA operate, you're recognizing that UCLA is operating and still receiving dispensation for doing some of the same underhanded

stuff that other folks are being castigated for. And so that recognition that playing by the rules is for suckers is absolutely accurate from the standpoint of who's making the rules. because the leaders, the UCLA's and the Dukes and the North Carolinas and all of those, you know, it's not as though they're doing it the right way, right? Not always doing it the right way. When I look at Tark, I see Barry Switzer. I see the guy who's who knows, who's just street smart enough to know how the game works. He's no dummy. He recognizes it and he's like, come and get me. And I think he's also along with Switzer, one of those coaches, one of those renegade coaches,

not where he was the first guy who was doing the stuff. He was the guy that the industry was like, we got to stop this guy. What he's doing is bad for everybody. So he becomes the flashpoint for something that has been going on for a very, very long time. but he's moving into legitimate spaces at the top of the game and making everybody else really, really nervous. Yeah, and this is also before Las Vegas became seen as being a little bit more family friendly.

And this is, this was Las Vegas. Yeah, yeah, like the area around campus, the college town in this case is Las Vegas, right? Like if you've ever landed in Vegas and you take your cab to the strip, you see UNLV right. there. Like, that's, that's the scene that's around there. That is New Haven. That is Cambridge. Where are we doing after class? Right. What are we doing on your recruiting visit? Right.

It is Las Vegas. So all of that is surrounding that. And then you have Duke, which was the Boston Celtics, the Utah Jazz and the Phoenix Suns, a college basketball, all rolled into one, right? The first superstar of the K era is Johnny Dawkins. That's how you wind up with these confused African Americans who were Duke fans, right? A lot of them got on board with him, right? I was one of them. Doc and Samaker. Yeah, man. They was with that. Like, that was the thing. But then as it went, it just got to be tough because it wasn't so much they had all them white dudes is that the announcers were very obviously cheering for them. You could not ignore that fact. But they got to the championship game in 1986 where I think they went into the tournament,

the number team in the country. They lost to Louisville, which was quietly a black people team that we don't talk about on the list of black people teams. But they- That Denny Krum thing. Yeah, man, Denny Crum, maybe they had that, right? Duke is on this run going through all these Final Fours. And if you watch Game Theory with Beaumonti Jones, you'll see me talk about this.

All the teams that black people love, Duke was, they was, they was legend killers. Like, they ran through, they got Georgetown in 88. Louisville is only one that really held down to Fort, for La Hente, you know what I mean? They got Arkansas out of there in 1990. Georgia Tech kind of fit to bill, you know what I'm saying? Like, that was another program where it was like,

huh, engineers, you say? They, but Duke got them out of it. I mean, look, Duke was just beating black people. This was what it was. And the announcers were cheering them all, but they could never get over the top. They never could. And so they played this game in a championship.

in 1990. Well, actually, let me stop there, because I think there's another part of it, too, that is forgotten is that North Carolina was also, like, in the green book for black people as programs being, Dean Smith basically integrated the Atlantic Coast Conference unilaterally. And Duke was the antithesis of that also. Like, they, they were on the wrong side of all of them. That's what's really interesting, too, about when you think about it, if you're of a certain age, depending on your fandom. I was, I was Georgetown, Georgetown, Georgetown. Georgetown, Georgetown, Georgetown, Georgetown. And then because when I was in high school, I was a guard, of course, you saw Dawkins and Amherker.

And I told Tommy Amherst, that was my team. And then as you get older, now you start to see all the other elements. Like, when you're in high school, it's just basketball. I didn't know anything about Duke. I didn't even know where Duke was. And then when you get into your 20s and stuff, you start learning about class. And now you're taking all those classes and you're like, oh, I was rooting maybe kind of for the wrong team. I'm learning all kinds of things that these things run a little bit counter to

my personal values. I didn't even know, I didn't care, I didn't know the difference between a public and a private university. Like, these things weren't, I was just a basketball fan. I watched Tommy Amaker through an alleyute to Johnny Dawkins, who was six to over David Robinson in the tournament. I was like, I like that. I'll take that. And then now you start to get by the time you get to 90, especially the 90 championship game. Now you're looking at other things. Now you start looking at, you know, it's almost like... I want to say one thing right fast for the people who don't know.

Howard Bryant, an alumnus of Temple University, and in the middle of this awakening, Duke B. Temple in the Elite 8 in 1988. When we were finally the number one, and only time we were the number one team in the country, at the Meadowlands, trying to get Coach Cheney to his first ever final four. and Mark Macon shot six for 29. And still only lost that game by seven points. Yeah.

Lost 88, 81, and Billy King shut down Macon and let's not talk about this. Okay. Just need to give a context. Just need to get the context. But what I was saying was, but by the time you get to 90, now all of a sudden you've got that Catholics versus convicts thing going on where now everybody's talking about it's race, it's class, it's not just basketball anymore.

And one of the interesting things about that time period, too, is you're talking about John Thompson, Georgetown, you're talking about Nolan Richardson, you're talking. This is also, let us also not forget, an extremely important figure during this time period, and that's Al Campanus. So three years earlier, you've got Al Campanus on Nightline talking about the 40th anniversary of Jackie Robinson,

and that's where he famously says, you know, that blacks aren't meant to be coaches and executives because they lack the necessity. So this is a really, really important time in discussing the competency of black coaches. The NFL, that year, 1990, that was the first year. They had just hired, they just hired Art Shell. It was the first black coach in the NFL since 1922. Wayne Fonce was right there. Wayne Fons was right there. Wayne Fons was right there. Wayne Fons Cape Verdean, but still.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. See, that's how that's how they get you. Just, just, you know, just just providing a few things. But you're also, but you're, but this is a time period. This is, this is the precursor to the Oscars So White and the BLMs and all of the things that would come later. This was the first one where everyone's talking about how come we don't have any black coaches? And you've got John Thompson who had finally won in 84. How come we don't, and why don't we have these things? And this is also happening at the exact same time, too, of Prop 48 and Prop 42. one of the fascinating things about this time period is, especially when we're talking about it in 26, is education was actually an issue back then. You're actually really having a conversation

about we are still here to educate. It's not just basketball. It's not just the money. It's not all of those things. It's happening all of these things. It's sort of a perfect storm. You've got Prop 48, which came in with the NCAA regulations that you had to have a 2.0 and a 700 SAT. which John Thompson and Nolan Richardson and those guys and Cheney were going off on because they thought it was anti-black. Then they doubled down. That was 86. Then they doubled down in 1989 with Prop 42, which was to say, you can't even have a scholarship. You're not even eligible for a scholarship if you don't have these numbers, which of course Cheney and Richardson and Thompson, especially Thompson, went wild on as well. It was like, okay. So you want the talent, but you're also trying to prevent, you know, you're also trying to get rid of. of certain people, you don't want them to play.

And so all of these things are happening at the same time, and here comes, you know, Southern Ivy League Duke beginning to make its ascendancy into the top of the game. A lot of different social factors taking place, and we're not even talking about the basketball yet. Yeah, like, it's in people have to understand at that time, this is, the 80s are when the blackening of college basketball really happens. Like, I was joking on Monday,

talking about how I saw Nebraska had five white dudes on the floor in that game. I had never seen that in a real game before. The BYU. Yeah. I saw BYU with five black dudes on the floor. And have five black dudes on the court in the five decades previous.

Yes. Like it's wild times, right? But the idea that obviously there have been a lot of great black college basketball players number one pick always was, da, da, dot, dot. But there were different programs, had different racial profiles. And just about every team had some white dudes.

on it, right? That's right. Even Georgetown, they did the bench. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But everybody, just about everybody had some white dudes in the rotation. And also I always used to say, as the years went on,

the true strength of your college basketball program, you were as good as the white dudes that you could attract. Like, if you could still get super cold white dudes, that's when you had a problem. I'm not just talking about, you know, the dude that can stand over there in the corner. You know, you're going to get you some white dudes.

Man, Jerry Tarkhani had no time for that. He was not even wasting his time thinking he was going to get them white dudes. to go over there. Like Larry Johnson and Christian Leitner are not of the same place, right? Bobby Hurley's a bit more of a working class guy. But the other thing, that was the other thing about Duke with the program, though, is that they had a bunch of dudes that looked like they would go to Duke. Yes, they did. Like, like, that was what the game was they had. And so 1990, they were the Dodgers. Yeah. They were the Dodgers of the 70s that we don't just play

the game. We play the game the right way. We're the clean cut. They were doing, there was an optics thing going on about how they were presenting. Yeah, and they're very self-aware about it because when it changed at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it's because they were conscious that it didn't play anymore. That's right. They knew they had a thing that was working for them. And so they play against UNLV in 1990. And look, that 1990 UNLV team was very good and thought of.

They had already beat America's sweetheart Loyola Marymount by 30 points in the elite eight. somebody had to do it. You know what I mean? If you weren't there, it was a very sad thing. But they went ahead and they decided to do that. But they actually were losing at the half to Georgia Tech in that game in the semifinal in 1990,

but Kenny Anderson and Dennis Scott and Brian Oliver. They came back and win that. They play in Duke, and it was a close game in the first half in 1990. And then I think it was after the first TV timeout, it was over. It was an ass whooping that was in. indelible in your mind because it always felt like if the game Matt Duke was going to win,

right? No matter what, the rest was going to cheat or something like that. Dude, Duke could have had seven players on the floor, man. They wouldn't go. And they would have got, they still would have got beat by 30. That game was seminal to me for a couple of reasons. The first, the first was the final score. One, if you're a college basketball fan of the 80s, and even today, still, you top 100 points in 40 minutes. You're doing something. Yeah, keep in mind, it was a 45 second shot clock in that time. And also the other thing to remember. And that's what I mean about some of this stuff is so foundational.

And we don't think about it anymore because it's all over. Is that that was also, there were two things taking place during that time period, too. One, you were in, I think the shot clock was only five years old. Yeah. Because I still remember that 39, 36 Georgetown SMU game where you just held the ball. If you had a five point lead with 10 minutes left, you just held the ball for 10. minutes. And then they start bringing in, I think the Big East had a 30 second shot clock, and the national was 45 seconds. And so all the different conferences had different shot clocks.

The other thing to remember is that that was, I think, the second year or the third year, if 87 might have been the first year, of the 19 foot nine, three point line. 99 for three points. And so the whole thing, everything is happening during that time period where it really is a very underrated. transitional period in the sport. Yeah, everything is changing. And these dudes were just beating them down the floor, right? And I was going to say, Beau, I don't mean to interrupt. There's one last, I forgot a piece I was going to say, too. And the reason why that game was so wild to me, it wasn't just the final score. It was also the fact that this was one of those mandate games.

It was like, oh, this is what the future is going to look like. Because Duke got rolled. Yes. They got rolled in so many ways where you look at at that and you go, these guys are playing a different style of basketball. It wasn't like NBA basketball, but what it was, it was close enough and athletic enough, and it did something that should have happened three, should have happened six years earlier, seven years earlier, but it didn't because FI Slamma Jama lost. There was this idea that you could still be athletic in college basketball. You could still, you know, you could try that Tarkhanian stuff, but when the real teams came and played the real fundamental basketball.

And when they really did all the textbook stuff, your athleticism was going to lose, not that night. Yeah, well, a key is Jared Tarkhanian was a much better basketball coach than Guy V. Lewis was. That's right. Right. Like that's the part that it comes down to, that Tark was interesting because he had a signature style of play that was based on

clear strategy, like the Amoeba defense. It was a thing, right? I don't know if he was the greatest offensive tactician, but it was a defense begets offense sort of situation. That's a they play defense. Right. Like that was a coach that was there. Because look, that UNLV team,

what it didn't have was a lot of size, right? Like its best player was six foot five Larry Johnson at power forward. And there is no way that we could possibly explain to you. What a monster. And like it wasn't Charles Barkley, right? There's only one of those. But it felt similar. Like it was a suddenness to the way.

that he played at that height an explosion at what he was able to do. Oh, boy. And also had Stacey Ogman, who was one of those precursors to positionless basketball. He's actually, in a lot of

ways, he was your second point guard on that team. At 6'7, with all the long arms and the defense and the whole thing, he's in that Pippin mode, right? Once again, you can start seeing the game change. Right. Point guard is Greg Anthony. I mean, it's a 10-year NBA vet, right?

Anderson Hunt at 2Gard, which doesn't mean anything now, but at the time sure seemed like a big deal. Like he wasn't a very good player. He was the most outstanding player in the 1990 tournament because he was one of the first of those guys right there on that wing and that 199, like hitting those shots. And look, Duke, the 1990 team was young when you look back on it. It's a freshman Bobby Hurley.

Youngest team. Sophomore Christian Leitner. It's the youngest team in the final four. Yeah, it's like Senior Al-Aabdale, Nabi, like the guys that are, that are, Danny Ferry had left off the team before. Like, the guys that are leaving not that important is the foundation of obviously what becomes a back-to-back championship team. But they were not ready for that game.

And so, Grand Hill was a freshman. Yeah. No, Grand Hill. 90. Oh, 90. I'm sorry. I'm not even there. Yeah, 90.

He's not even there. Yeah, 90 he's not even there. But this led to something that you talked about in our phone conversations about this, which was the question was coming up about Duke. Like, okay, yeah, you've made four final fours in five years. but you're going to win or what? Like now, now they were getting squeezed for the fact that forget about how incredible it was that they could win that many games at all.

The squeeze had become keeping in mind that while they're making those final fours, Carolina's made none. Carolina hasn't been to a final four at this point since 1982, and Duke is now four out of five years. That's right. And also by the time you get now, after that game, when we talked the 91 game, we're going to talk about the, the vaunted Duke team that is inevitable now that we all,

hate now that always finds a way to win now. They had lost four out of five to the eventual national champion. Yeah. Right. So they, it was sort of like, okay, what are y'all going to do it? When are you going to win? And it's wild to think about Mike Shashefsky as the guy under pressure to produce. Are you, you know, to ask the question of Mike Shoshvsky, are you actually a winner? And I think about this when you go back to those time periods because it was. It was. such a different period, that in today's game, his job would be in jeopardy. You lose four times to the eventual champion. People would look at you like you're the problem.

Yeah. And look, coming up next, we're going to get to that game in 1991. And, well, yeah, we'll get there coming up next. It's time to slide your glass slippers over your lucky socks and hope. for a fairy tale ending. It starts when you put in $10 on Fanduil Predix, and we match it with a $10 bonus.

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plants. And listeners to our show get 20% off their first purchase when using the code Beaumani at checkout. That's an additional 20% off better plants and better growing at fast growing trees.com using the code Beaumani at checkout. Fastgrowingtrees.com code Bowmani. Now's the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use Beaumani to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time, terms and conditions may apply. All right, we are back with Howard Bryant. So the thing about that 1991 UNLV team, rock stars. Everybody came back.

Like they win a national championship. Larry Johnson back. Stacey Ogman, back. Anderson Hunt, back. Greg Anthony, back. And they were playing in a backwater conference, the Big West, right? The Big West was not really a thing. They went in the Big West back then.

They were in the PCAA, I think. No, they were in the Big West. Was it Big West 91? Yeah, they were in the Big West. My apologies. But they still. set up a good non-conference schedule. Like they have the

the game at Bar and Hill Arena, number one versus two, number two, UNLV against Arkansas. We're tied day and Larry Johnson get into a fight there because Arkansas had been to the Final Four that year before. That was an up and down game boy. That was one of those. It was like a hundred something to 90-something type of games.

40 minutes of hell, so they run in the press. They are similar personalities, similar archetypes. Because Nolan Richardson was like, who's in Memphis? Come on down. or come on over here and let's go. I remember that game being such a big deal. That to me is like maybe at that point

the blackest college basketball game that there had ever been. Yeah, and once again, the underrated piece of those teams, and this is where I sort of separate Georgetown because Georgetown was a defensive team that had very questionable offense. I mean, until they got Iverson,

they were never, Georgetown was never, there was never a Thompson team that was offense first. No. But with Nolan's teams and with Tarks teams, you got all that defensive intensity, but they could put the ball in the basket too. Yes, yes. And they had guys. Like, Lee Mayberry was the first round pick.

Todd Day was the first round pick. Like, that was a game. UNLV won that, but UNLV ran through their schedule. They were from, they were the national champions from day one, it felt. Like, wire to wire. We knew which way this was going to go. There weren't even really a lot of close games along the way. Like, when they had won the championship in 90, they lost.

lost games in conference, right? Like those, you know, those kinds of things could happen. That did not happen in this. Meanwhile, Duke is playing in, I mean, 1990s, ACC basketball is so like, these are the glory days type of situation there. There's a lot of guys in that conference. You got Kenny Anderson coming back for his sophomore year,

North Carolina with what turned out to be its first team to go to the final four in nine years. NC State, I think you got Rodney Monroe and Chris Corsiani. were there, like, there were this, it was the gold standard conference of college basketball at this point. 100%. And I think that that was the, the other piece of it, when you think about, at least what I was thinking about Vegas, was the way that you follow up a championship.

They're undefeated. Like they were on the verge of making you rethink everything you thought you knew about college basketball. They were crushing everybody. And they were crushing everybody. And by the way, underneath all of that was Tarkas dirty. Yes. And so you've got this. There's an Oakland Raiders bad boy thing going on here where it's like, oh, we're going to have to contend with these guys at the top of the game.

In a lot of ways, Fab Five and Burrower. before the Fab 5, right? Yes. And the bad five will tell you that. Mm-hmm. And they were blackening the game up, and the coaches were exploiting that because the biggest thing that we didn't talk about, that was the most important thing in 1991 when you're Duke walking out of there, after they got beat 103 to 73 in a championship

game, was we're afraid of them. They're too fast. They're too black. They're too athletic. They're too everything. They're doing too many things that escape the rules of college basketball. Because let's also not forget back then. It's a lot different today.

But back then, one of the other things about college basketball was the officiating was part of officiating was still, was also teaching back then. When you watch the college basketball game, my goodness, they called every damn infraction. Right. I think, I mean, I believe a travel back then was one and a half steps in college where it's two steps in the pros. Today it doesn't really matter. And so they were really, really structuring the game in a very traditional way. And Vegas blew everybody's doors off. And so the thing that your Duke going into that tournament in 91, you know, and I'm one of the forwards on that team, Brian Davis, you know, had said it too, that we have to prove that we're not a.

of them. And it's a certain type of fear. There's the type of fear when you just know the other teams better than you. And then there's the type of fear where you are racially and emotionally intimidated by them. They were playing a black game. And Shoshchevsky and those guys knew that that we're emotionally afraid of this. And that's a different type of fear. And somewhat, I don't even think ironic's the right word, but I think, think you'll understand what I mean. The brand of what they were doing was pushing back against this. Like this was a, this was a stand in a lot of ways.

This, you know what this was, Beau? This was in a lot of ways whether people want to admit it or not. This was one of those unfortunately yet necessary racial referendums in sports about who gets to play and who doesn't play and who dominates and who teaches and who doesn't, who's legit and who's not. This is 1977 NBA finals. This is the do-it-the-right-way trailblazes against the free wheel and 76ers.

Yeah. And then you get to this final four, which even in real time was a legendary final four of sorts. In the end, it turns out it's four Hall of Fame coaches. But it was Carolina's return to the final four. It was Roy Williams at Kansas first final four. So you had on one side of the bracket, you had Carolina and Kansas,

this weird, incestuous pair of college basketball program, that sends people back and forth all through their history. That's right. It's a lot. Dean Smith is the guy from Kansas. Roy Williams is the guy that coached Kansas from North Carolina. Larry Brown, North Carolina guy who goes to Kansas. They play in the 1957, the Will Chamberlain game.

Like they overlap a lot. Anyway, but the big thing is Roy Williams, Dean Smith is basically his dad. That's right. Right. And he's coaching in that game. And then on the other side, you have this rematch of UNLV and Duke and the media sold this one a lot harder because they had a lot more time to pair for it. It kind of happened haphazardly in 1990 because there was no guarantee you were going to get that game.

You had a week going in where it was absolutely black hat white hat game going into that. And Vegas is by the way, and also by the way, in Vegas is also going after UCLA's records. They're undefeated. Yes. And there hasn't been an undefeated team since Bobby Knight and 76. Right. And so there's a lot on the line for. for UNLV.

Yeah, and they felt just in total in that game. It did not feel going into it like Duke had a chance just because they had been out class so thoroughly. But they did, I mentioned this, him in the NIM part of this, but they did add Grand Hill. And that was important, particularly in a game where what we learned as the game went on, that was important for UNLV was what they didn't have was depth. Yeah. And Greg Anthony in Filed Trouble was a big deal.

and filed out. Yep. With five minutes ago, they were leading when he filed out of that game. Going into that game, there were a couple of things, too, at work that were really important. And that intimidation factor. And I went and rewatch the game on YouTube just to make sure my memories were accurate. And one of the things, two things really jumped out at me. The first thing was just the journalism.

watching the game, you know, in 1991. James Brown was a sideline reporter for CBS. Billy Packer and Jim Nance were on the call. It wasn't dominated. The conversations and the discussion around the game was still dominated by professional reporters and not ex-players. So there's a lot of, it has a different feel to it. The other thing that hit me about that, too, in watching these teams go at each other, was that the amount of time that they emphasized on intimidation.

There's a code word in there. There's a lot of code in there that you're talking about making sure that McCaffrey and Leitner and Hurley aren't intimidated by Ogman and Johnson and George Ackles. That was a Billy Packer special. That was a Billy. Exactly right. That was right in his wheelhouse. And it really does sort of underscore that they're fighting for the soul at a sport right then and there. And what I thought was fascinating about watching that game was the number of, and Leslie Visser was another sideline reporter on that. What I found fascinating about that was the number of quotes that they, times that they had quoted Shoshchewski in the timeouts talking about how, because Duke hung in there. It was a two-point game. You know, the largest lead in the game was two or three points, four points, you know, here and there, five points. It was not, nobody went on a big run in that game, especially in the first half.

And Shishevsky is imploring his team. It's almost like, it's like Rocky Four. He's just a man, right? It's like, in other words, you don't have to be afraid of these black dudes. They're just people. And we're going to beat them. And we're beating them. And so you could tell that a lot of Shishvsky's coaching.

was to demystify this idea of black athletic invincibility. And look, man, the thing about Shoshaski is he sees himself as a tough guy. He is a Bob Knight disciple. He went to... Army guy. Yeah, he went to West Point. He grew up a Polish kid on the south side of Chicago. The idea of being pushed around by anybody is antithetical to his very being in very existence.

And what wound up happening with that UNLV team, it steal those dudes. And so Christian Laytoner, who's now a junior, by the end, becomes as unflappable as a college basketball player had ever been. But you are absolutely right. The idea was, you can't be scared of those black dudes. And they're like, but we, I ain't a lot, man. We kind of are. Yeah, yeah. And Larry Johnson has gold teeth.

That's not about to say. You see that gold, too? Like, it's right there. Like, you're telling me, I ain't. I don't really understand what you even talking about right now, man. Like, what do you think? That's right. And underneath all of that is this idea that these guys aren't really college students.

They're not students. They're not, you know, this is not a molders or molders of men game that these guys, dare you say the word thug, right? This is where it's all happening. And let's also not forget, underneath all of that, the NCAA is looking very deeply into Jerry H. Arcadian every chance it gets. Yes, at every turn. It is a legal battle that went on for a very long time. We have landmark legal decisions that come out of this.

But in the end, you watched this game more recently than I did. Duke just kind of won, right? So the fix. Yeah, we can bring this up now. Yes. It was so implausible to us that Duke could win that game, that we widely believed that there was a wide belief that the game was fixed. widely believed that the game was fixed.

Now, keeping in mind, there were also, like, pictures of UNOV players in a hot tub with a man who was referred to as, The Fixer? The Fixer. So I don't want to pretend as though, like, there's no reason

that it might have come up in conversation. Is that Moses Scurry in the hot tub with the fixer? I think, yes, Moses Scurry, and I can't remember who the other dude was. Yep. And also, yeah, and also there were those plays that kind of got circled.

You know, did Larry John? Johnson hesitate on a shot that he could have made, all of it. And so the reason why I went and watched this game wasn't just to make sure that my recollections were accurate. It was also to go look at those plays again. I was like, let me go see if I'm going to do a little eight men out and start circling plays. And you know what I discovered about that game? Duke won the game. Really?

That what I saw in that, I saw there was one clear comp to me in that game. game and maybe two if I can think about another one, but there's one that really, really, really jumps out of me. That's the 07 Super Bowl all over again. That is Giants, that is Giants Patriots where everything is on the line. And you could tell that UNLV is like, what do you mean? We're losing. I mean, like the game's tied. The game's called. You know, they hadn't trailed in the second half, but twice all season. You know, what? One, one, was to Georgia Tech and the other one was, I think, Ball State maybe or something like that. They really hadn't been, they killed everybody so badly. And it reminded me of what John McEnroe used to tell me

about pressure when he said, I never forgot this. It's really, really great. Pressure is the possibility you could lose. And now you start watching that game. It's a two-point game at the half and all of a sudden, these guys didn't buck. They're still here. And then on top of that, Greg Anthony gets into foul trouble. They're up three and it looks like they're starting to pull away about five minutes left. Here they come, right? Six minutes left. Greg Anthony goes in for a lap that would have given them a five-point lead. They call a charge, which wouldn't be called a charge today. And the whole game changes. And suddenly it's, not the game that you thought it was

and now Anderson Hunt has to play point guard and all of the stuff is and you can tell by looking at them when they're passing the ball around they don't know what to do because they just got hit and you could tell that it was like holy shit this whole thing's falling apart

we might not win and that to me when you watch that game is the real like we're supposed they never went on the 10-0 run they never went on the 18-0 they never got going, that they played a game in the mud and never got out of the mud and didn't quite know how to close.

And I think there's something, I think, interesting to me about that game for UNLV that I view very similarly to the January 1987 Fiesta Bowl with Penn State and Miami, which is, and I don't, people will say they don't do this on purpose and it's true, but I think it's one of those moments who you remember, oh yeah, these guys are 20 and 21 years old. That's right. Right. Like the most humanizing element of college sports are those moments where you realize, oh, that's right. They're just kids. They're just kids, you know? And that is like seeing Michael Irvin and Alonzo Highsmith and Melbourne Bratton and all those guys

bawling on the sidelines after they'd been truly obnoxious for all this time when they were on top. And then it gets to the end and it's like, oh yeah, that's right. That's where they are. That's where they are in this. and were UNLV trying to get a shot off on that last possession? They choked. Didn't even have a play.

Yeah. Didn't know where to go. Anderson went for the win. And Larry Johnson, that shot that he supposedly held up, they got them. So to set up, they've got the lead, and Duke comes back and ties it. And Leitner hits two free throws to give him the two-point lead with 12.7 seconds left. 12.7 seconds left is a lifetime in basketball. And back then NBA rules are not the same as college rules back then.

Back then, you couldn't take the ball out at half court. So you had to take the ball out from your own basket. But still, 12.7 seconds is plenty of time to get what you want. And by the time UNLV got the ball over half court, they were like, oh, shit, we're going to lose. Larry Johnson, Larry Johnson's got a kind of set up three, but it's not a wide open. And the way people talked about that, it was like he had pulled a Ben Simmons or something. Like he had a 10-footer and decided not to shoot and kicked it out. By the way, people were using this as fix evidence.

Exactly. This was that the shot that Larry Johnson, you know, it was a three-point from the elbows, it was like a 22-foot shot, maybe little inside, but it was a three-point shot. He didn't take it. He had a guy, pretty, you know, rushing out at him. I was like, that's the fix. It was so different from what I remembered it, the conversation to be. And then they kick it back out.

and Anderson Hunt takes a desperation three with two guys on them and they, you know, it's a brick and they, and they lose the game. But to me, what there were two things that really jumped out watching that game. The first was that Duke didn't fold. It's like what, you know, the, the bully took a swing and they didn't go anywhere. They're like, okay, we're here to play. They were here to play. That's the first thing. The second thing was how different the game of basketball is played. You go back and hop on YouTube and watch that game. That shit is packed in the paint. I mean, it is Detroit Pistons packed in the paint.

Like, everybody is on top of each other. And today, the game is so spaced and there's movement and there's flow and guys, you know, there's open shots. There were no open shots in that game in that second half of that game. It was straight up hardcore basketball, old school basketball where you're like on each other defensively. And, you know, and by that point, you know, the biggest. This piece of it was at your best player, national player of the year material, Larry Johnson. They didn't give him the ball in the second half. He had a little tiny run with about seven minutes left, but for the most part, neither he nor

Stacey Ogman did anything in the second half. And at the same time, Kristen Leightner had 20 in the first. Like those guys, it was a battle. It was a really, really great game. And then of course, the last thing about it was your point guard files out and you didn't really know what to do. Yeah, he's the only guy that can run the offense. That's right. Like, that was the thing is that once he went down, that's, that's when it fell apart. Now, what this game- He doesn't follow out they win that game. Yeah. Yeah. Here's the fun part on this. This game led to the

building. Honestly, I don't think there's been anything like it since then, which is the building of the legend of Christian Leitner. This is where it starts. This is, this is where it starts. like this is the big win. I mean, he went to four final fours, won two national championships, and what this was, and there were a couple that it guided from them along the way, I suppose,

but the big thing is, this is the beginning of Christian, like you fully understand it. Christian Leitner gave it to every one of the top players of his era. Yeah. In some cases, multiple times. It's also, he got it multiple times from him,

home and on the road. Fab five got it, home, road, and neutral sight. Mm-hmm. He gave it to everybody. Yeah. One thing about that game, though, that I also, I do want to go back to that,

but one thing about this game, too, that I thought was interesting was my recollection was also that it was Bobby Hurley giving him the business, too, and it wasn't. Oh. It wasn't. Anderson Hunt and Greg Anthony ate his lunch.

That was a guard-run offense. and Anderson Hunt and and and Greg Anthony they killed Bobby Hurley they killed him they hunted Bobby Hurley they were looking for where he was and he couldn't hang with them he couldn't hang with them but Leitner could in the front court yeah and that was the difference and that was also when you think about it this is really and you can go back when you think about like when we were talking about some of the social racial stuff of it too like where was the creation of like of white Duke it's Leighton Yeah.

Because. Well, with a dash of Ferry. And Ferry. But the 86 team had Mark Allery and Jay Billis and those guys, but it had Dawkins and Ambiker. Right. Right. And also because they didn't win. Okay, they got Ferry, but they didn't win.

Yeah. You know, and nobody would have said, oh, you put Danny Ferry up against Shaq. You know, I mean, it's not, it wasn't the same Latner because of who he was given the business to. Yes. emboldens the whole thing in a way that has always driven me crazy. in terms of our discussion, it's like, okay, white great player suddenly comes with implications, right? It's not just that he's a great player and he did his thing. It's like he's the standard now. Yeah. And it may, and it required them to do some obviously hypocritical things because Leightner was such a jerk.

That's right. Right. Like, like, that was the part of it. It was like, I mean, he stepped on somebody in the in the lead eight round and they did not throw him out of the game. which allowed him to continue having what one might argue was the greatest game anybody's ever played in the history of college basketball. And there was a moment in that game too where Grant Hill pops Greg Anthony in the face with his shoulder. Which was once again, like I don't want to overstate this. It was once again, Duke had to prove they weren't punks. Yeah.

Right? And Billy Packer in that game goes, he needs to get thrown out of the game for that. And I'm thinking, imagine Grant Hill getting thrown out in the first half of that semifinal. And so, and then they went back and said, oh, no, I really don't think so. And second thought he hit him with the shoulder, not the form. But it was still very much of, you can't intimidate us moment. Yeah. And then they're very, mm-hmm.

If they needed to prove to anybody, they weren't soft, they needed to prove it to that man over there screaming at them in that suit. That's right. Because he didn't believe him. Like, unless you don't want to walk home. That's right. And then a couple of plays later, Larry Johnson walks by Grant Hill and gives him a shoulder to the face. I'm like, oh, they balling right now. This is a territorial game.

This is a territorial game. And I loved it because I was like, oh, these are all things like, oh, when I watched that game, I was what? I was 22 years old. So now you look at it with different eyes and you go, oh, man, there was a lot at stake here. These guys were trying. It was an alpha game. It was an alpha game. and for Shashefsky as well to prove once again,

like I said, because you got to remember him. He's probably at the sidelines also thinking at some point, when am I going to get one of these? And is Tarkhanian going to roll me again two years in a row? Right. I mean, and this is a milestone moment in the history of college basketball. 100%.

Like this whole thing. And like I said, Leitner did not beat the FAP of 5 in those three locations. He simply beat them on the rogue and on the neutral site. The next year, Fad V5 came to Cameron. I mean, yeah, after later, graduated and then one there. Jaila Rose said, Czicke beat him four times in that whole career. They gave it to Temple.

They gave it to Arkansas. They gave it to Georgetown. Anybody that had a whiff of it, they was like, hey, we got, we got something for all of y'all. Like, this was, you're right. I think your point is a great one that this is really kind of the building of the idea of Duke being white. And then it kind of got reinforced in the aughts because that 99 Duke team, which I contend is the best team Shoshesky ever had. And I don't know if any white dudes got any minutes on that one.

That's Eldon, Corey McGettie, William Mayfrey, Trajan Langdon. Because that was when it was coming off after his back hit messed up. And when Duke needs to recover. They can recover. Yeah, they don't really get so caught up. Yeah, you know what they care about otherwise. You know where they're looking for players. Yeah, yeah.

We're like, hey, man, we ain't got time to play with y'all no more. Come on. Yeah, you with the shady A, you coach. Yeah, come on down, partner. Duke as villain starts here. Yes. You know? And also Duke as Hero starts here.

Yeah, I guess it depends on what, because they've been villains in our house. You know, my daddy was ahead of the game. You know what I'm saying? Maybe just mother people a little long time to get wise. We was on it. We saw it. We saw it. Yeah, I mean, and I love that because I, like I said, I remember,

it's easy to like a team and it's easy to take a team in whatever direction you want to take them when they don't win. Yeah. And then once they win, now you start looking at all of it differently. You know,

it was kind of cute when Tom Brady won his underdogs and they beat the Rams and oh it. And then it wasn't cute in five years later. It doesn't get, you know, because now the lens changes. And I think that what is fascinating about that game is that you can, you can do this. You can circle seminal games and moments that sort of shift the balance and shift

where things are going. And I think, like I said, in rewatching that game, the illusion or just the idea of education is on top of this, too, because let's not forget, nobody would question Duke as an academic institution. People question UNLV because it didn't even exist. 1975, right? So it's like, this ain't even in real school. Right. So, like, so all of those different things, when you take all of those elements and you put them on the basketball court at an extremely high level with extremely high stakes, you got something remarkable, and that was a remarkable game. That is Howard Bryant. Check out Kings and Ponds. I still got my copy right here for you guys to see here. It is an excellent book that I still highly recommend you go check

out Kings and Paul's on Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson. Give this a look. My brother, I appreciate you. Oh, my pleasure. This was fun. Like I said, I love, I've just forgotten all about all of that. And it's, I think it is, like, I remember, like, I had a girlfriend who used to just laugh at me, like, because I used to watch, you know, ESPN Classic and stuff. Like, did the score change? No. When was the game 30 years ago? Why are you watching it? But it was fascinating watching this basketball because it's not the same basketball that we see today. Nah, man, it's a different game. Brother, I appreciate you. And ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us here on the right time. We do this four days a week.

Ryan Brumley handles everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Hit the voicemail line 3-2-3-9-6-7-67. Remember, follow the right time. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. What's all to you guys in a couple of days? Take it easy.