Basketball world praises Tarkanian as coach, person

UNLV Rebels basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian yells during a game in Las Vegas, [undated]. (Wayne Kodey/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Reaction from the basketball world to Jerry Tarkanian’s death Wednesday morning at age 84 was quick and consistent.

The message was virtually the same — great admiration for a man who helped change the game of college basketball, a man who never backed down from a challenge and whose teams were always tough to prepare and play against.

“I think, like Dean Smith, Tark had many of the same virtues,” said Louisville coach Rick Pitino, who was enshrined in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame with Tarkanian as part of the Class of 2013. “He loved his players, and he brought innovation to our game.

“He also fought the NCAA because he thought it was right. It took a lot of fortitude and caused him a lot of added stress in his life. But he believed he was right, and he never let it affect his ability to coach his guys.”

Hall of Fame chairman Jerry Colangelo said Tarkanian’s enshrinement was well-deserved.

“I’m saddened by Coach’s passing,” Colangelo said. “He had great respect in the basketball world, and I have great memories of him that goes back decades.

“I feel positive that we were able to honor him while he was alive and able to enjoy it. He made significant contributions to the game of basketball, and he’ll be missed.”

Lon Kruger, who coached UNLV from 2004 to 2011 before leaving for his present position at Oklahoma, said Tarkanian had a positive impact during his tenure as coach of the Rebels, which included a Sweet 16 appearance in 2007, the furthest the program has gone in NCAA Tournament play since the Final Four team of 1991.

“He loved UNLV,” Kruger said. “He had a great passion for the people and for the fans. He genuinely wanted the program to succeed while I was there.”

Kruger said it was an easy call to reach out to Tarkanian and welcome him back to campus.

“It was the right thing to do,” Kruger said. “We wanted him to feel welcome again around the program, and when he’d show up to practice, you could see a little extra energy in the players, like they wanted to impress him.”

San Diego State coach Steve Fisher, who became good friends with Tarkanian over the years, said preparing to play Tarkanian, whether it was at UNLV or later Fresno State, was always going to be a challenge.

“When you prepared to play him, the first thing was, ‘We have to match their effort,’” Fisher said. “Jerry had the most important quality that every successful coach has to have — he cared. He was fiercely loyal to his players and his coaches and his university.”

Sonny Vaccaro, who had a relationship with Tarkanian going back to his days at Long Beach State in the late 1960s, was emotional as he remembered his close friend.

“He never allowed any of the negative stuff to affect his coaching,” said Vaccaro, a longtime power broker in the sport who signed Tarkanian to a shoe deal with Nike in the early 1980s when Vaccaro worked for that company. “He was ahead of his time in so many ways, and not just on the court. He promoted the black athlete. He stood up for his rights when the NCAA tried to run him out of the game. He may have been the most maligned person in the history of college basketball.”

Attempts to reach NCAA officials for comment Wednesday on Tarkanian’s death were unsuccessful.

Kentucky coach John Calipari, who became close friends with Tarkanian, said the Las Vegan deserves a special place in the pantheon of college basketball coaches.

“The biggest thing for me was all his players saying how he was the greatest coach to play for,” Calipari said. “He got his kids’ respect, and they always played so hard for him. And he did it all kinds of ways, and he won. He played a 2-3 zone. He played pressure man-to-man. He played the amoeba (zone). He always was coming up with ways to beat you.

“For me as a coach, to have him call me and talk basketball and have him tell me how much he enjoyed watching my teams compete, that was one of the greatest honors I could receive.”

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said losing Tarkanian just days after losing Smith, the legendary Hall of Fame coach at North Carolina who died Saturday, was tough to handle. Krzyzewski twice played against Tarkanian and UNLV, losing 103-73 in the 1990 national championship game, then defeating the Rebels 79-77 in the 1991 national semifinals.

“Sadly, we’ve lost another basketball icon,” Krzyzewski said in a statement released by Duke’s sports information office. “Jerry Tarkanian was an excellent basketball coach and had one of the truly unique personalities in the game. He built and led some of the most talented teams in the history of college basketball while at UNLV.

“He had an uncanny ability to take star players and mold them into cohesive and selfless teams. That is a testament to how well he related to his players. They adored him. As coaches, we admired him as well. His teams were a joy to watch, unless you were playing against one of them. He taught pressure man-to-man defense as well as anyone has ever done.”

Bob Knight went head-to-head with Tarkanian at the 1987 Final Four, coaching Indiana to a 97-93 victory over the Rebels in the semifinals. He said he always had great respect for Tarkanian.

“I appreciated Jerry Tarkanian as a friend and had great respect for the way he taught the game of basketball,” Knight said in a statement through ESPN, where he is employed as a TV analyst.

Lute Olson and Tarkanian were longtime rivals, but the retired coach said the two always remained friends. Olson followed Tarkanian as coach at Long Beach State after Tarkanian left for UNLV in 1973, and the rivalry developed when Olson went to Arizona in 1983.

“Our friendship goes back to when I was at Long Beach City College and he was at Long Beach State,” said Olson, who won an NCAA title in 1997 and is a member of the 2002 Hall of Fame class. “He was a great coach and a great recruiter. And even though things between us got heated at times, we always respected each other. After he retired (in 2005), everything was fine.”

Vaccaro said despite the resounding success Tarkanian enjoyed as a coach — he was 784-205 in 31 seasons at the Division I level (509-105 in 19 years at UNLV) — he never changed who he was, which was a regular, blue-collar guy.

“All the things he went through, all the battles, he did it by being Jerry Tarkanian,” Vaccaro said. “He will go down as one of the greatest coaches in the history of college basketball, and nobody can deny him that.”

Contact reporter Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow him on Twitter: @stevecarprj.