Overview:
The Gauchos, the last team to defeat UNLV’s national championship team of 1990, scored their lone NCAA Division 1 Tournament win 35 years ago
There was no World Wide Web to trumpet the bigness of the Big West Conference during its heyday in college basketball.
Lost to all but the memories of us old-timers was that, 35 years ago, UC Santa Barbara was among four league teams with a legitimate argument for inclusion in the 1990 NCAA tournament.
But only once since 1993 — the year the internet went global — has more than one of its teams reveled in March Madness at the same time.
The University of Pacific got an at-large bid in 2005 after losing the Big West final and the automatic qualifying berth that went with it to Utah State.
Neither team is still a league member.
The Big West, however, will have its best chance in 20 years of getting two invitations to the Royal Ball of College Basketball when the NCAA Selection Committee hands out the Big Dance cards next Sunday.
The NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) — a ranking system that employs winning percentage, scoring margin, and adjusted net efficiency — rates league-leader UC San Diego at No. 35 nationally.
The Tritons are well within range of receiving one of the 37 at-large berths to the 69-team NCAA tournament should they lose in next week’s Big West tournament in Henderson, Nevada.
UC Irvine, which flexed its muscles by punking UC Santa Barbara with 67 points in the second half of Saturday’s game at the Thunderdome, is at No. 62.
The Gauchos (19-12, 11-9 Big West) rank fifth in the league in both the standings and the NET at No. 143 out of 364 schools.
The conference overall ranks 12th out of the 31 Division I leagues. It was 20th just five years ago and as low as 25th in 2019.
Even the Big West’s second-tier teams have made NET gains. UCSB had to shoot a school-record 71.4% to pull out an 81-75 victory at Cal State Bakersfield on Feb. 6.
“This is the best the conference has been since I’ve been here — it’s not even close,” said Joe Pasternack, the Gauchos’ eighth-year head coach. “Every game is a war.”
He’s expecting the Roadrunners to give no quarter to the wounded Gauchos when they face each other again at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the first round of the Big West tournament at the Lee’s Family Forum in Henderson, Nevada.
Living At-Large
UCSB is the only current member of the Big West to ever earn an NCAA at-large bid. The Gauchos did it twice — in 1988 and 1990.
The circumstances surrounding the Gauchos’ 1990 selection, however, remain some of the most bizarre in Selection Sunday history.
Even after the NCAA had made its picks, UCSB had to sweat out the result of that day’s Big West final between UNLV and Long Beach State. (Stay tuned for those details.)
ESPN had convinced the Pacific Coast Athletic Association to change its name to Big West just a year earlier in 1989.
The network wanted to televise the conference’s games in the late-night slot of its Big Monday lineup, following the Big East and Big Ten.
The Gauchos were on a meteoric rise in 1990.
Ten lettermen including starters Carrick DeHart, Eric McArthur and Santa Barbara High graduate Paul Johnson returned from their 1989 National Invitation Tournament team that had been nationally ranked midway through the season.
Ben Howland, the relentless recruiter for then-head coach Jerry Pimm, had scoured the Los Angeles area for such top talent as DeHart, McArthur, Gary Gray and Idris Jones. All four wound up scoring more than 1,000 points in their Gaucho careers.
“The NCAA didn’t restrict you so much in how many days you could be out there,” Howland recalled a few years later. “I used to drive to L.A. every weekend for this league at Dominguez High called the Slam ’N’ Jam.
“During the summer, I’d be gone for six straight weeks.”
Howland, who settled in Santa Barbara after retiring in 2022, went to the NCAA Tournament 11 times as a head coach. That included three straight Final Four appearances with UCLA from 2006 to 2008.
Pimm, who still works Gaucho games as a color analyst for ESPN+, said their 1990 team was UCSB’s “deepest and most talented group ever.”
And no Gaucho season was more eventful.
Lions in Winter
UCSB finished with a 21-9 record against one of the toughest schedules in its history. The Gauchos placed third in the Big West behind co-champions UNLV and New Mexico State.
They won their first three games before losing on Dec. 9 in a 104-101 thriller at Loyola Marymount.
That contest had a chilling moment when Hank Gathers, the Lions’ All-America center, fainted at the free-throw line during the second half.
He was sidelined for three weeks after being diagnosed with an abnormal heartbeat.
He died on March 4, however, after collapsing during LMU’s semifinal game of the West Coast Conference tournament.
The run-and-gun Lions, who set an NCAA record by averaging 122.4 points per game, wound up advancing to the NCAA Regional final before losing to UNLV, 131-101.
The Gauchos won five straight games after their loss at Loyola, trouncing Oregon along the way, 70-54.
Exceptional achievement at the Thunderdome even came during a 74-61 loss to New Mexico State on Jan. 11.
Less than two minutes remained when McArthur was taken out of the game with 27 rebounds to his credit.
But Bill Mahoney, UCSB’s director of sports information at the time, made a fast break to the Gaucho sideline after researching the Big West record for most rebounds in a game.
“It was a Pacific guy, John Gianelli, and it was 28,” Mahoney recalled. “I went down to the bench and leaned over to tell (assistant coaches) Ray Lopes and Bobby Castagna, ‘I know the game is decided, but McArthur is one rebound away from the Big West record.”
Lucius Davis, a sophomore who looked up to McArthur as a mentor, promptly missed a short jump shot that banked straight to the Gaucho star.
“I don’t know if Lucius threw that ball up off the backboard on purpose or not,” McArthur said through a sheepish smile, “but it bounced my way.”
Beach Party
The team also bounced back with a raucous, 82-67 win over arch-rival Long Beach State. The 49ers got such a dressing-down that Joe Harrington, their excitable coach, yanked off his sport coat and threw it a group of hecklers in UCSB’s cheering section.
Three weeks later in Long Beach, Harrington lost both his cool and the game to the Gauchos again, drawing two technical fouls in an 84-67 defeat.
Those two losses would be later cited by the NCAA Selection Committee in its decision to pick UCSB over the 49ers for an at-large bid.
Pimm told Harrington, who had previously coached on the East Coast, that he should take a more Cali-cool approach to his job.
“I told him his guys were playing tight because he was so tight,” Pimm said.
“I told him that we’re more laid-back out here … That he doesn’t have to wear socks during the winter and that he has to learn to slow down and smell the roses.”
Harrington took his advice and Long Beach responded by winning its next nine games.
The 49ers figured they had all but clinched an NCAA tournament berth by extending their streak with a 90-85 victory over 23rd-ranked New Mexico State in the Big West semifinals.
But UCSB was on a roll of its own. The two wins over Long Beach served as the bookends of a nine-game stretch in which its only loss was a 69-67 heartbreaker at UNLV.
The Thunderdome warmed up for the Runnin’ Rebels’ return visit by willing the Gauchos to a dramatic 72-64, overtime victory over Cal State Fullerton.
Future NBA star Cedric Ceballos had staked the Titans to a 59-48 lead with just 2:25 remaining. But Jones, that year’s Big West Freshman of the Year, rallied the Gauchos with three straight three-pointers.
DeHart tied the game with two clutch free throws with 36 seconds remaining. Another freshman, Mike Meyer, followed that up by leaping high to stuff a shot attempt by Fullerton’s Mark Hill.
A thunderous roar from the crowd then seemed to stuff Ceballos’ free-throw attempt with seven seconds to go, extending the game into overtime. The Gauchos cruised from there.
“God bless those screaming people,” Pimm said afterward. “They helped us, and we really needed them.”
Rebel Rousers
It got even louder when UNLV, ranked No. 2 at the time, came to the Thunderdome on Feb. 26 for UCSB’s Senior Night.
ESPN announcer Barry Tompkins complained that he couldn’t hear himself speak during the telecast. Lip-readers caught him saying, “The noise in here is at least the equivalent of an airplane firing its engines for takeoff.”
Davis recalled “hitting a baseline jumper and my ears ringing because the crowd roared.”
He said UCSB’s bench was able to communicate with the players only because, “Thankfully, we had a very loud assistant coach in Ben Howland who would yell out plays relayed to him by coach Pimm.”
Rebel center David Butler helped arouse the fans after his dunk gave UNLV an early lead.
“(He) was mocking the crowd and doing all this screaming and stuff like that,” McArthur said. “That made the crowd a little bit more determined to be aggressive.
“This is our house. We’re the aggressors.”
McArthur walked the talk by blocking four shots to start the second half. He finished with 20 rebounds and 15 points.
“We weren’t breaking down,” DeHart said. “We played the mind game with Vegas — looking them in the eyes, showing them no fear.”
UCSB’s biggest fear was that DeHart wouldn’t be able to play, having sprained his ankle severely during the previous day’s practice.
“I was very upset,” McArthur recalled. “I couldn’t believe that it had happened. But he’s a tough kid.”
DeHart proved how tough by having trainer Harry Callihan treat his ankle all night and then wrap it tightly in duct tape just before tipoff.
He scored 24 points, and then slumped wearily onto the scorer’s table to watch 6,387 fans rush the court to celebrate the Gauchos’ 78-70 victory.
The scene turned so wild that Davis, who would win Big West Player of the Year honors two years later, had to extricate himself from a pile of celebrants to rescue a cheerleader named Tara.
“I was busy celebrating and high-fiving everybody when I finally heard her calling out, ‘Lucius! Lucius!’” he recalled. “I jumped up and grabbed her and got her out.”
She wound up marrying her rescuer and giving him two daughters, both of whom would also graduate from UCSB.
Even UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian got caught up in the moment. He waded through the mob scene to find and then embrace his good friend Pimm.
“This is as good an atmosphere as you’ll find for college basketball,” Tarkanian told the media just a few minutes later. “I don’t believe there’s any place in the country better than this.”
His national champion Rebels wouldn’t lose again until Duke ended their 45-game winning streak more than a year later, in the 1991 NCAA championship game.
Topsy Tourney
The Gauchos came down from that high to lose their Big West Tournament opener to Pacific, 65-62.
The hometown crowd at the Long Beach Arena, meanwhile, inspired the 49ers to defeat both Utah State and New Mexico State to advance to Sunday afternoon’s final against UNLV.
They played the Rebels on even terms throughout the first half, only to get a jolt at halftime when the NCAA released its tournament bracket.
The line showing the opponent of No. 8 Houston at the Southeast Regional read: “No. 9 UCSB/Long Beach St.”
The die had been cast: If Long Beach won, it would be the Big West’s automatic qualifier and UNLV would be an at-large team. If UNLV won, it would take the automatic qualifying spot and UCSB would get the at-large berth.
Selection Committee chairman Jim Delany said they were forced into such an unusual remedy because the Big West Tournament final hadn’t started until 3 p.m. West Coast time.
“These late games are playing havoc with the selection process,” he said. “The committee felt, ‘Who should bear the burden?’
“Basically, we felt the Big West should bear the burden.”
Big West commissioner Jim Haney didn’t think well of such a King Solomon approach of splitting the No. 9 seed between two of his schools.
“I may be biased, but I clearly believed we had four teams that deserved to be in the NCAAs,” he said. “Whether we played on Sunday afternoon shouldn’t factor into it.”
The Thunderdome’s Founder’s Room turned into a funeral parlor when a Big West viewing party watched Long Beach take a 44-41 lead early in the second half.
But Butler turned from Gaucho fiend to friend by hitting a turnaround jumper to ignite a 17-1 run that led to a 92-74 Rebels’ victory.
Harrington, once again, felt he’d been slighted to UCSB’s benefit.
“They didn’t take care of business, we did,” he said. “They didn’t win a game in the tournament … They lost to a lower seed.
“We won two games and beat the No. 1 seed (New Mexico State).
“We took care of our business.”
The Gauchos got down to business in the NCAA Tournament in Knoxville, Tennessee, by knocking off Houston in the first round, 70-66.
Gary Gray held his own with Carl Herrera, the Cougars’ NBA-bound center, with 15 points and nine rebounds.
McArthur also came off his man to swat several of Herrera’s shots, finishing with a double-double of 20 points and 11 rebounds to go with five blocks.
His fourth steal sealed the deal during the closing seconds. He alertly got the ball to Johnson, one of the Big West’s best foul shooters, and he sank two free throws to clinch the victory.
“Eric played like a man in that game, making big play after big play,” DeHart said. “We bounced back, too, after a crucial turnover near the end of the game.
“It was just our fortitude and resilience that won that game for us, and that’s what the tournament is all about.”
UCSB also threw a second-round scare into Big Ten champ Michigan State before their season reached a whistle-stop: The Gauchos were called for 27 fouls to just 14 for the top-seeded Spartans in a game they narrowly lost, 62-58.
Johnson, who drew the assignment of future NBA star Steve Smith, fouled out with 5:20 to go.
Davis also fouled out, while both DeHart and McArthur finished the game with four fouls apiece.
“We were supposed to win, and I think that’s how we felt,” DeHart said. “I know I’ve always felt that Michigan State upset us.”
They were resolute to the end.
