UNLV Athletics Hall of Famer and Runnin’ Rebel legend Larry Johnson is one of six decorated former players and three influential former head coaches selected to the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2019, the NABC announced Tuesday.
Johnson will be among those officially enshrined on Nov. 24 in Kansas City at the 2019 National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame Induction Celebration presented by Nike.
Johnson is the first from UNLV to become a member of the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.
Regarded by many as the greatest UNLV basketball player ever, Johnson was a dominant force during the Runnin’ Rebels’ run in the early 1990s. After starting his career at Odessa College in Texas where he won Junior College National Player of the Year honors, he transferred to UNLV in 1989 and averaged 21.6 points and 11.2 rebounds per game over the next two years.
Johnson was a two-time consensus first-team All-American, two-time Big West Player of the Year and the 1991 consensus National Player of the Year.
Under Naismith Memorial Hall of Famer Jerry Tarkanian, Johnson led the UNLV men’s basketball team to the 1990 national championship and then went 35-1 the following year, making a second straight NCAA Final Four appearance.
In his two years at UNLV, Johnson scored 1,617 points and collected 837 rebounds. He is still the program’s record holder for most rebounds in a season with 457 (1989-90).
The first pick in the 1991 NBA Draft, Johnson earned the league’s Rookie of the Year award in 1992 and went on to become a two-time NBA All-Star. He was inducted into the UNLV Athletics Hall of Fame in 2002.
The 2019 class of the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2019 includes Indiana’s Calbert Cheaney, Duke’s Shane Battier, Purdue’s Terry Dischinger, Providence’s Ernie DiGregorio, Stanford’s Todd Lichti, and former coaches Homer Drew, Lute Olson and the late Rick Majerus.