As NCAA Tournament opens, players from UNLV’s 1987 team recall their Final Four journey 25 years later

By Ray Brewer (contact)

Wednesday, March 14, 2012 | 2 a.m.

When ranking the great teams in the history of the UNLV basketball program, the general order never changes for most supporters.

The 1990 national championship team and 1991 Final Four team are typically ranked 1 and 1A, while the Rebels’ first Final Four team in 1977 is always mentioned in the same sentence.

The 1987 Final Four team, which was led by Armen Gilliam in the post, and Freddie Banks and Mark Wade in the backcourt, seems to get overlooked — at least according to Eldridge Hudson, the team’s enforcer on the inside. While they weren’t as celebrated as the Larry Johnson- and Stacey Augmon-led teams of the early 1990s, they definitely deserve some credit for their successes, Hudson says.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the 1987 team reaching the Final Four in New Orleans, where Banks set a Final Four record by making 10 3-pointers in a national semifinal loss to eventual national champion Indiana. They lost just two games that year by a combined five points in helping pave the way for the program’s future successes. (To this day, the players don’t consider an 89-88 loss at Oklahoma a defeat because of a disputed bucket before halftime that was incorrectly ruled two points instead of three).

“Las Vegas, for some reason, and I don’t know why, seems to forget about the 1987 team,” Hudson said. “If it wasn’t for the 1987 team, you don’t have the Larry Johnsons, Stacey Augmons and Anderson Hunts coming here because Vegas wasn’t a winning program. I talked with Anderson Hunt (the '90 Final Four MVP) the other day, and he said the reason he came to UNLV was because he saw me dunking and doing the Pee-Wee Herman dance (after the dunk). He realized Las Vegas would be a fun place to play.”

After all of these years, the players on the 1987 team are still close friends and frequently exchange phone calls or text messages despite living in different cities. Hudson returned to Southern Nevada following a lengthy playing career in Europe and helps coach in Banks’ program at Canyon Springs High. Wade and Gary Graham both live in Southern California, and Jarvis Basnight lives in Michigan.

Hudson always tells a story about how practices would become so heated and competitive that fights would break out. The hard feelings, however, never lasted.

“Twenty minutes later, we’d be sitting and laughing about it in the locker room,” said Hudson. He and Graham were the lone two players on the 1987 team who played for UNLV in 1982 during its last season at the Las Vegas Convention Center. “We were a bunch of knuckleheads who just loved each other, man. I tell everyone we were the 12 stooges.”

It was that kind of camaraderie that made them successful with the game on the line.

They trailed Iowa by 19 points at halftime of the Elite Eight but never panicked in playing a strong second half to erase the deficit and reach the Final Four. In the locker room at halftime, the players say there was no yelling or self-doubt. Everyone thought they would be victorious.

“When you play ball, you have to trust your teammates, and we built that over time,” said Graham, whose two foul shots with 10 seconds remaining gave UNLV an 84-81 lead for the final victory margin. “We were down, but we worked so hard that, mentally, we knew we would get a second wind. Those free throws were something you dream about as a kid.”

Despite Banks setting the 3-pointer mark while scoring 38 points, Gilliam’s 32 points and a tournament record 18 assists from Wade, UNLV couldn’t overcome the Steve Alford-led Indiana team. It marked the end of a memorable season but was just the beginning of the players’ lifelong friendship.

When Gilliam, who is seventh on the school’s all-time scoring list and had a 13-year NBA career, died last year from a heart attack suffered while playing a pickup basketball game, the news came as a shock to his former teammates because Gilliam appeared to be healthy. When the school honored the 1987 team last month during halftime of UNLV’s game against San Diego State, Gilliam’s family was also included in the celebration.

“I couldn’t believe it. Not Armen,” Basnight said. “He was a specimen. He was bigger than life in my eyes. Just like everyone else, I was messed up when I heard the news. That’s my family. It’s a family thing. I miss that man every day. May he rest in peace.”

In the Final Four season, the Rebels returned most of its roster and all of their key contributors from the 1986 team that lost to Auburn in the tournament. The players knew they were talented but needed a summer tour in Australia and New Zealand to set the table for the memorable season.

In addition to forming the bond of lifelong friendship, the team developed an identity on the trip — they weren’t going to be pushed around, and they wouldn’t accept defeat.

“We said we were going to the Final Four,” Basnight said. “No team is going to beat us. After Australia, wherever we went or whoever we played, they had no chance to beat us. Any team that got in front of us, we’d bust their ass.”

It was that type of mentality that gave the players confidence. They weren’t going to be denied.

“We weren’t cocky, but we always knew we were going to win,” Hudson said. “I can’t put into words how special that team was. We were never rattled. You have to understand the history of the program. We were a bunch of inner city kids and had the mentality that nobody was going to mess with us or beat us. UNLV was a school of hard-nosed kids. And we looked out for each other.”

When the team was honored at halftime last month, the players continued to practice what they preached. Wade carried a chair for Tarkanian, who is now elderly and not always at full strength, to sit on at mid-court. Behind the scenes at a pre-game brunch, the players took turns introducing their families to Tarkanian and reminiscing about their time in the scarlet and gray.

“The bottom line is that man gave us an opportunity others wouldn’t,” Basnight said. “I will go to my grave honoring and respecting him. He made it possible for everyone to go to UNLV. He looked at you as a human being and not just a basketball player. He wanted to make sure we had a better life.”

When the Rebels open the NCAA Tournament on Thursday against Colorado, Hudson, Basnight, Graham and the others will be cheering from a distance in their hometowns. They feel more connected to the program now that Dave Rice and Stacey Augmon, players from the back-to-back Final Four season in the early 1990s, have returned as coaches.

“I see them getting back to the way we used to play with the running and the pressing,” Graham said. “That’s UNLV basketball. That’s why we all came. I’m sure Stacey and Dave being under coach Tark will share that same philosophy.”

Banks always watched the tournament to see if his record was broke. Twenty-five years later, it still stands. Like his teammates and friends, he’d give up the personal glory for one more game in the 1987 season — a chance at the national title.

“When you're a senior, you don’t want to end your career like that,” said Banks, who, if several fans have their way, will have his No. 13 jersey retired by the program. “Being able to play in the Final Four was a blast because of the teammates I played with. I was in a zone that night. I really was. It’s been 25 years? That's crazy how time flies.”

Ray Brewer can be reached at 990-2662 or [email protected]. Follow Ray on Twitter at twitter.com/raybrewer21.