Tarkanian revolutionized the college game at UNLV, utilizing a pressing defense to fuel its fast-paced offense.

Tarkanian studied at Pasadena City College and later Fresno State, earning a bachelor's degree while playing basketball.

He left the Runnin' Rebels for a brief stint coaching professionally with the San Antonio Spurs in the National Basketball Association (NBA) before finishing his career at his alma mater, Fresno State.

Throughout his career, he battled accusations of rules violations from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), with each of his three universities suffering penalties.

[10] Tarkanian then transferred to Fresno State College, where he played basketball for the Bulldogs in the 1954–55 season as a backup guard.

[15] University of Nevada, Reno history professor Richard O. Davies wrote in his book, The Maverick Spirit, that Tarkanian's recruiting practice drew complaints that he was running a "'renegade' program built upon less than stellar students.

"[16] When the 49ers made the 1970 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament led by All-America Ed Ratliff, Tarkanian boasted that his team consisted almost entirely of junior college transfers.

[15] Though the schools were separated by just 30 miles (48 km),[17] John Wooden of UCLA refused to schedule a regular season game with them.

[11][15][17] Wary of continuing in UCLA's shadow, Tarkanian accepted an offer to coach at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1973.

[11] Prior to his arrival, UNLV was dubbed "Tumbleweed Tech" by locals, and their basketball program had no winning track record and minimal fan support.

However, North Carolina controlled the tempo with coach Dean Smith's famous four corners offense, and the Rebels lost 84–83.

However, a rematch against Duke in the national semifinals saw the Blue Devils prevail 79–77 after the Rebels' Anderson Hunt missed a 22-foot shot at the buzzer.

[15] Tarkanian had been under more or less constant scrutiny from the NCAA for most of his career, but managed to weather the pressure until he signed Lloyd Daniels, a talented, but troubled shooting guard from New York City.

Not long after Daniels' arrest, it emerged he'd been led to UNLV by Richard Perry, a prominent gambler who had been convicted twice for sports bribery.

Months after UNLV's 1991 semifinal loss to Duke, the Las Vegas Review-Journal published a picture showing three of Tarkanian's players in a hot tub with Perry.

[16] He returned to college coaching at his alma mater, California State University, Fresno, from 1995 to 2002 and led them to six consecutive 20-win seasons.

Following his retirement, Fresno State was placed on probation by the NCAA for violations committed by its men's basketball team under Tarkanian's watch.

While at Long Beach, he wrote a newspaper column charging that the NCAA ignored improprieties at powerful schools while it pursued smaller, more defenseless institutions.

[22] After he left Long Beach State, its basketball program was slapped with probation for recruiting violations which occurred under his watch.

[16] The case eventually made it all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled in 1988 that the NCAA had the right to discipline its member schools, reversing the 1977 injunction.

The resulting negative publicity led the NCAA to institute a clearer separation between the enforcement staff and the infractions committee, as well as a system for appeals.

[25] NCAA executive director Walter Byers famously disliked Tarkanian, and said "Tark's black players play a fast city-lot basketball without much style.

[16] Tarkanian was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013, an honor that fellow coaches had been saying was overdue.

"[15] Upon Tarkanian's retirement, future Hall of Fame coach Jim Calhoun proclaimed him "one of the best teachers of defense in the last 25 to 30 years of basketball.

[3] Tarkanian was an innovator who had his teams play a pressing defense that forced turnovers to trigger its run-and-gun offense.

[3][27] Tarkanian recruited players that his peers often passed over, taking chances on junior college students or those with a troubled past.

Tarkanian's teams changed the style and image of college basketball in a way that predated the impact the Fab Five of Michigan had in the 1990s.

[2] He became a celebrity, and tickets to UNLV games became hot items with regulars, including Vegas headliners Frank Sinatra, Bill Cosby and Don Rickles.

[3][29] With no professional teams then playing in the city, the Rebels became the town's center of attention,[28][29] and their pregame ceremonies included light shows and fireworks during player introductions.

[2] On February 18, the casinos along the Las Vegas Strip dimmed their lights for roughly three minutes in Tarkanian's honor.