Honoring the Past: 1989-90 Men's Basketball

VIDEO: Looking Back at the Run to the 1990 NCAA "Elite Eight"

1989-90 Season Photo Gallery

The 1989-90 Texas Men's Basketball team and coach Tom Penders will be recognized at halftime of Tuesday's game against Appalachian State. In conjunction with the team's reunion being held in Austin on Monday and Tuesday, we take a look back at that magical team's run to the NCAA "Elite 8."

The following season recap appeared in the 1990-91 Texas Basketball Media Guide, written by former University of Texas basketball sports information director Dave Saba.

KEEPING A PROMISE

The Elite Eight.

In years past at Texas, a "Key Block" was something that a Longhorn offensive lineman threw to clear the way for an Earl Campbell or Eric Metcalf touchdown run.

In 1990, the Texas Longhorn basketball team gave that phrase a whole new meaning.

Now, it is the lightning-quick move from a man named Panama Myers that snatched victory from almost certain defeat on a March afternoon in Indianapolis, Indiana.

With seven seconds remaining in UT's NCAA second-round game against Purdue, all-time leading scorer Travis Mays -- who scored a career-high 44 points to lead the Runnin' Horns to a first round 100-88 win over Georgia two days earlier -- drained a pair of free throws to give Texas a 73-72 lead.

Boilermaker guard Tony Jones took the inbound pass and dribbled the length of the floor, cutting through the Texas defense like a John Deere tractor through a field of Indiana hay.

Jones knifed past midcourt, then swept by the free throw stripe with nothing between him and the basket -- and a Purdue visit to the Sweet 16. As he lofted the ball skyward, a burnt orange blur emerged from somewhere amidst the 37,842 folks and the spacious accommodations of the Hoosier Dome. It was Myers. And with a soft flick of his wrist, the Texas center deflected Jones' shot harmlessly off the glass. The Runnin' Horns were in the round of 16.

It was at that moment that basketball at Texas became more than just something to fill the time between the end of the fall football season and the beginning of spring football practice.

The next week, Texas moved on to Dallas and erased a 16-point second-half deficit to defeat Xavier 102-89, before ending the season just four points shy of the Final Four, with a 88-85 defeat suffered at the hands of SWC foe Arkansas.

It was a performance that showed the Runnin' Horns could play with the big boys, it was also just another late-season run for Tom Penders, the guy they've come to call "Mr. March."

When Tom Penders came to The University of Texas two seasons ago, he made a commitment to take Longhorn basketball to a higher level. After two straight 20-win seasons, a school-record two straight NCAA appearances and now, a trip to the Elite Eight, it is pretty clear he's kept that promise.

The 1990 Longhorns swept to the Final Eight as one of the nation's most exciting teams. Their "BMW" of (Lance) Blanks, (Travis) Mays and (Joey) Wright provided guard firepower that saw the trio average a collective 63.9 points per game, including 239 three-pointers.

The up tempo Longhorns averaged 93.7 points per game, good for seventh-best in the nation, and finished the campaign with a 24-9 record. The 1990 season marked the 10th trip to the NCAA Tournament for Texas, and the first time the school had ever made back-to-back appearances.

Penders' emphasis on the national level quickly became clear with the Texas schedule last season, which included non-conference clashes with Florida, LSU, Oklahoma and DePaul, as well as tilts with SWC foes Arkansas and Houston. Of the Longhorns' nine losses, all but one came to NCAA tourney teams. Of those, only a late Oklahoma surge, which stretched a close game to a 103-84 final margin, posted a defeat of more than 11 points.

Crowds continued to flock to see the show, as the Runnin' Horns averaged a remarkable paid attendance of 13,072 - an increase of 3,061 from 1989 - and an astounding jump over the 4,028 UT averaged in 1988, the season before Penders came aboard.

Mays, despite playing much of the Longhorns' third-place SWC season with a badly injured index finger on his shooting hand, became the Southwest Conference's all-time leading scorer in the Georgia game. The senior guard shared SWC Player of the Year honors with Arkansas' Lee Mayberry, making Mays the first back-to-back SWC MVP in conference history. The Ocala, Florida product was also named honorable mention all-America.

Blanks, who finished his career with a 20 ppg scoring average -- good for third on UT's all-time list -- finished his two-year career at Texas as the school's all-time steal leader with 198 thefts. Blanks' 1,322 points are the most ever scored by a Longhorn in a two-year stint. For his effort, Blanks earned all-district honors from the Basketball Writers of America. Joey Wright, who notched Texas' highest single game scoring total in 35 years with a 46-point effort against Stetson in late December, was a second-team all-SWC pick.

Junior college transfers Locksley Collie and Guillermo "Panama" Myers rounded out the starting five. The duo's marked late-season improvement and inspired performance in the post season played a major role in Texas' NCAA success.

1989-90 SEASON NOTABLES

This was Texas' first "Elite Eight" appearance since 1947, when the Longhorns made it to the Final Four of what was then an eight-team tournament. Texas did the same in 1943, and lost in the First Round of an eight-teamer in 1939. This was by far UT's best showing in the modern era.
Nineteen-ninety marked the first time in Texas history that UT made back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances.
Texas' 24-9 season was its second consecutive 20-win campaign (the Runnin' Horns were 25-9 in 1989). This was only the third time in school history that UT won 20 in consecutive seasons.
Texas set a new school record with eleven 100-point games, breaking the record of ten set in 1989.
Texas finished the season ranked No. 12 in the final USA Today/CNN college basketball poll, marking the first time since 1982 that Texas earned a national ranking.
Lance Blanks (651 points), Travis Mays (772 points) and Joey Wright (644 points) -- Texas' Ultimate Scoring Machine -- combined to be the first threesome from the same team in the 75-year history of the Southwest Conference to score over 600 points each in a season. Each member of the trio also topped the 300-point mark in SWC games, another SWC first.

What They Were Saying…

In a whirlwind two weeks, Tom Penders guided the 1990 Runnin' Horns further than any Texas team had ever gone in the modern era of the NCAA basketball tournament. UT began the tournament as an afterthought in the minds of the national media, and finished its run just four points short of the Final Four. As the Texas story unfolded, the run-and-gun style of the Longhorns won fans across the nation. In case you missed it, this is what they were saying…

"Texas plays airborne-style basketball. Bombs away. Keep 'em flying. Forget an advance scout lantern that suggests one-if-by-land, two-if-by-sea attack. It's three by choice, and look out below. The Horns hurry up to put it up. They run to gun. Flee to shoot three. Those are their shooting rules if there actually are any."

Frank Luksa of the Dallas Times Herald on the Texas team he saw in the Southwest Conference Tournament.

"You don't hold Travis Mays if he's on. You don't hold Lance Blanks. Nobody's done that. Some nights Lance and Travis and Joey will have bad nights, but if they're on, we've got a chance. If they're knocking down their shots, we're a tough team. I don't think anybody wants to play Texas the way we play. We can be a coach's nightmare."

Tom Penders on the eve of UT's NCAA opener versus Georgia.

TEXAS 100 GEORGIA 88

"We tried to zone him out of the game, and they got it inside to him. We tried to double-team him, and he got the ball back. He's a great player. We didn't have an answer for him tonight."

Georgia coach Hugh Durham on Texas' Travis Mays, who lit up the Bulldogs for 44 points (the sixth-highest total in NCAA First- and Second-Round history).

"If you double-team Mays, then they pass to Blanks. It's just a question of whether you want to get shot on the left side or on the right."

Durham on Lance Blanks, who added 21 points for the Longhorns.

"We'd just never played a team that runs and presses for 40 minutes."

Georgia center Alec Kessler.

"If that wasn't an All-America performance, then I haven't seen anything. That was a great victory for us. We just beat the Southeastern Conference champ on a neutral court with neutral officials in front of 40,000 fans (an NCAA First- and Second-Round record 39,940). Our program is here and here to stay."

Texas coach Tom Penders during the post-game press conference

"Texas didn't win because it got some unexpected spark from a role player or a sub. Instead, the Longhorns were carried by their star, Travis Mays, the oft-injured guard who finally got a well-deserved chance to show the country what player, what flat-out, ice-blooded gamer, he can be."

John Maher in the next morning's Austin American-Statesman.

THE DAY BEFORE THE PURDUE GAME

"I think it's great to play in Indiana. These fans are unbelievable. I had at least seven guys come up to me who said they used to be high school coaches in Indiana. They were all gray-haired and looked like they had ulcers. But this is an amazing state for basketball. It's like going to the Mecca here. Nobody hates us here. We're having some fun."

Tom Penders

"We want to get them out of a half-court game, into a pickup-type, playground game."

Texas guard Joey Wright on how he felt the Longhorns needed to play to defeat second-seeded Purdue.

"He gives you a pump fake just as a courtesy. Then he goes right through your nostrils."

Penders on Purdue's six-foot nine-inch, 250-pound center Stephen Scheffler, who during the season established an NCAA career field goal percentage mark.

"We are going to try to disrupt them. I like to get it going 90 miles an hour and let the guys do the work."

Penders on his plan for success against Purdue.

"He reminds me of Otis Birdsong, who was at Houston when I was at Arkansas. When he was averaging 33 points a game, our goal was to hold him to 32 and win by one."

Purdue coach Gene Keady on Travis Mays.

TEXAS 73 PURDUE 72

"We've had a lot of big wins the last couple of years, but we beat a class team, a class program in front of a lot of their fans. That's a credit to these kids. We've been coming from behind all year and somebody always comes up big. Today, it was not just our normal three."

Penders on Texas' second-half comeback win, spearheaded by Benford Williams and Guillermo Myers.

"Get us close in the last two minutes, and we'll find a way to win."

Penders to the team during a timeout with Texas down, 56-47, at the 12:41 mark of the second half.

"We were loose when we were losing in the first half. We were loose when we were down nine in the second half. We were loose with seven seconds to go. We never lost our cool."

Texas senior guard Lance Blanks.

"Travis, you're an All-American. You'll be making free throws like this in the NBA for the next 10 years."

A smiling Penders in a timeout huddle to Travis Mays, who was about to shoot a two-shot foul with Texas down, 72-71, with :07 left.

"I'll knock them down for you, Coach."

Mays reply.

"Myers was so much of a hero that Mays, who hit the game-winning free throws, and Lance Blanks sat with their arms around his shoulders during a news conference afterward. Myers just smiled."

Dan Langendorf of the Dallas Times Herald on Mays, Blanks and Myers at the post-game press conference.

"Do I feel like a hero? Not really. I am just doing what I am supposed to be doing. I'm supposed to play good defense and block shots."

Guillermo "Panama" Myers on his last-second block of Purdue's Tony Jones' layup attempt.

"All I could think about was what Danny Ainge did to beat Notre Dame."

Pender on his thoughts when Jones began dribbling up court with :07 on the clock. Ainge went coast-to-coast for a layup in the final seconds to defeat Notre Dame, 51-50, in a Regional Semifinal in 1981.

"We wanted to taste the Sweet 16, and we wouldn't give up."

Myers.

"We're no fluke. Beating a team from the best conference in the country makes us believe we can beat anybody."

Penders.

THE "SWEET 16" RUNNIN' HORNS RETURN HOME

"Before we went to the NCAA Tournament, we were a team that people believed could not win a big game. And we won two of the biggest. I think we opened up a lot of eyes."

Blanks.

"Comparatively speaking, the Purdue game was the biggest basketball victory in school history. The win over Houston in 1972, the NIT victory in 1978, those were important. But basketball has gotten so big there's so much national attention, that advancing to the Sweet 16 is just an amazing accomplishment."

Texas Sports Information Director Bill Little, a 21-year veteran of UT athletics.

"It's a big step up for our program and a big step up for our conference. The conference is in a state of change. Something like this helps get us from where we've been to where we need to go. For the Texas program, this is something we can build on. It should be a great boost to recruiting."

Texas Athletics Director DeLoss Dodds.

TEXAS 102 XAVIER 89

"That little man in my head said put it up, so I put it up. He said shake, so I started to shake. He said dance, so I started to dance."

Blanks after an over-the-head second-half basket and impromptu dance on the baseline. Blanks, who had two points at the half, scored 26 in the second 20 minutes in UT's come-from-behind win.

"Locks was dead. I chewed him out when we were by ourselves, with no one else around. I still don't think he's talking to me."

Assistant coach Vic Trilli on a halftime meeting with forward Locksley Collie. Collie, who had two points and three rebounds at halftime, finished the game with nine points and a game-high 16 boards.

"I saw fear come out in their eyes. When they looked up and saw that their 16-point lead had vanished, I could see they were worried."

Mays on the looks on the Xavier players' faces when Texas erased a 16-point, second-half deficit.

ARKANSAS 88 TEXAS 85

"Anytime the ball leaves my hand, unless it's off-line, I think it's going in. That was one three-point shot I wanted to go down."

Mays on his 25-foot, three-point attempt that hit the front rim with Texas down, 86-83, with :18 left.

"Oh, so many things were going through my mind. I was having trouble sorting it all out."

Mays on his thoughts while prone on the floor, after fouling out trying to rebound his missed three-point attempt in the waning moments.

"I've said again and again, we're a Top 20 team, maybe Top 10. It was a great run, and we're gonna build on this."

Penders.

MEMORIES

"I'm going to remember how cool and calm Coach Penders was, even when we were down by 16 points (to Xavier). And I'll remember Panama's block, and my teammates. I'm also going to remember that I showed the country that I could play."

senior guard Travis Mays.

"I'll remember that shot in the lane (against Xavier). It turned out to be a great season for us. Three years ago we were like bums on the side of the road. Now, it's like we're executives."

senior swingman Lance Blanks.

"There may indeed be better Texas basketball teams than this one in the future, but there won't be one that plays harder, pulls as many upsets, or wins over as many fans. This is the team that let the nation discover Texas basketball, and the one that let Austin go mad in March. Thanks, guys. It was quite a ride."

John Maher of the Austin American-Statesman.

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