In the 1990 Final Four, the championship game, where UNLV crushed Duke, 103-73, overshadowed the semis, but those games were pretty good too. UNLV got by Georgia Tech, 90-81, and Duke beat Arkansas and Nolan Richardson’s 40 Minutes of Hell, 97-83.
Arkansas, from Richardson on down, was unbearably cocky,
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Arkansas players explicitly promised to inflict physical misery on the Blue Devils. They told the media that they would force Duke into a chaotic, frantic pace that would ultimately make them break under the pressure. The Razorbacks warned that Duke’s structured, half-court play would not survive what Arkansas would do to them, and that didn’t go over well with the Blue Devils.
After the game, Bobby Hurley said “[t]hey didn’t follow through on [40 Minutes of Hell]. The last five minutes, they were the ones who were worn out.”
Richardson agreed, saying that his team was “puffing and blowing, something I’d never seen.”
The win over Arkansas was a highlight, but the real 40 Minutes of Hell came from UNLV. Their pressure did break Duke, and led to the biggest championship blowout ever.
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The teams would meet again in the 1991 Final Four, and we would see a very different outcome, along with the rise of a legend in Christian Laettner.
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