UNLV stars honor Jerry Tarkanian with matching tattoos

Five prominent members of UNLV's 1990 championship team found a meaningful way to honor the memory of their beloved coach.

Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon, Anderson Hunt, Moses Scurry and Chris Jeter each visited a Las Vegas tattoo parlor together late Tuesday night and got matching ink in remembrance of Jerry Tarkanian.

Their tattoo reads "UNLV 1990 National Champions" above a picture of a basketball with the score of the Rebels' title game victory over Duke below it. Inside the ball is the phrase "R.I.P. Coach Tark" with his date of birth and date of death.

The matching tattoos signify both the strong bond between the players who were part of UNLV's glory years and the love and respect Tarkanian's ex-players have for him. One of the hall-of-fame coach's legacies was his willingness to offer second chances to kids whose checkered academic histories might have prevented them from going to college otherwise.

Some of that, of course, was a product of his desire to win championships and his inability to compete with the likes of Duke, North Carolina and UCLA for blue-chip prospects out of high school. Some of it was also that Tarkanian identified with the kids he recruited since he grew up in a poor single-parent household and he was initially an indifferent student until he got his priorities in order.

Johnson, a junior college product, starred at UNLV during the 1989-90 and 1990-91 seasons before enjoying a highly successful 10-year NBA career. Augmon earned All-American honors as a senior in 1991 and was honored as the nation's top defender his final three seasons with the Rebels. Hunt was named the 1990 Final Four's most outstanding player, Scurry was a sixth man who did a lot of dirty work defensively and on the glass and Jeter was a reserve who played sparingly off the bench.

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The tattoos are one of many meaningful tributes planned for Wednesday.

UNLV will honor Tarkanian with a pregame ceremony before its game against Boise State and will give fans a commemorative Tark Towel when they arrive at the Thomas & Mack Center. Then after the game, casinos on and off the Las Vegas Strip, downtown and elsewhere across the state will dim their lights for three minutes beginning at 10:30 p.m. PST.

That's a special honor only seven others have received, yet it's the matching tattoos from his ex-players that would probably mean the most to Tarkanian. It shows the bond among the Rebels and the impact he had on their lives.

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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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