As UNLV’s basketball team heads into its Wednesday night road test at Air Force, the Runnin’ Rebels are looking to open Mountain West Conference play 4-0 for the first time in school history. More head-turning is the fact the Runnin’ Rebels haven’t started ANY conference season 4-0 since the 1991-1992 season — Jerry Tarkanian’s last as UNLV head coach — when they were a member of the Big West.
In other words, despite all the criticism and talk of a hot seat, UNLV head coach Marvin Menzies is primed to do something no other head coach — Dave Rice, Lon Kruger, Charlie Spoonhour, Bill Bayno, Rollie Massimino — has done since Tark was “running” the show for UNLV.
It has been 27 years since Runnin’ Rebels have opened conference with four straight wins. Twenty-seven. That’s five years before senior guards Kris Clyburn and Noah Robotham were born. So much has happened in the UNLV basketball program since — the utter failure of Massimino, Bayno’s firing after violating NCCA rules, Spoonhour’s steady rebuild, Kruger’s short return to prominence, Dave Rice’s mid-season firing and Chris Beard’s betrayal.
The Rebels are looking to make a little history in Colorado Springs — a notoriously tough place to play (the Falcons dominated San Diego State Saturday, 62-48). With that in mind, let’s take a look at 10 things that happened in 1992, the last time UNLV Basketball started conference play 4-0.
