Two collegiate basketball documentaries premiere this weekend, featuring the last two programs that had the power to polarize us as fans: Jerry Tarkanian’s peerless UNLV team of the early ’90s, and the Michigan Wolverines who immediately followed.

If you are a fan of the sport, and of its history, both are irresistible. The Vegas show, “Runnin’ Rebels of UNLV,” premiered on HBO last night and will be repeated tomorrow at 7 p.m. The Michigan piece, “Fab Five,” will be broadcast tonight at 9 p.m. on ESPN. It is quite possible that these might be the last two college programs we ever will see who could carry these kinds of documentaries — and leave you wanting for more.

That, sadly, is the result of how diminished a product college basketball has become. Look, nobody enjoys the NCAA Tournament more than I do, and I spend an awful lot of winter hours taking in Big Monday and Super Tuesday and pacing over the outcomes of St. Bonaventure games and enjoying doubleheaders at the Garden. The sport still is very healthy, and still terrific theater.

But to believe it remains where it was when Vegas ruled the roost, and when the Fab Five succeeded them — to believe the product is the same — is to kid ourselves.

Think about this: When UNLV won its national title, in 1990, its two best players were accomplished juniors — Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon — and there was a specter of NCAA probation lurking over the program. Now, 21 years later, there is no doubt — none — that both players would have been NBA bound by the time the championship parade was over (in truth, there’s very little chance either would still have been in college as juniors, either). And even Michigan managed to keep its core five together for two years, though its two anchors, Chris Webber and Jalen Rose, would have been lottery picks any time they wanted to test the waters.

So it is inarguable that the strength and quality of what we watch every March was better then than it is now. It is also safe to say that no team ever will cause quite the rifts in public perception that both these teams did. Sure, it’s easy to grow tired of Duke and its perceived elitism, and it’s also true that probably 97 percent of the people watching last year’s title game would have give up a week’s salary to have Gordon Hayward’s halfcourt prayer lift Butler to the title.

Quick: Name the Duke starting five last year. Time’s up.

Quick: All of you who ever had heard of Gordon Hayward before this time last year, step forward. Seriously. Anyone?

Exactly.

It’s right that these teams be presented together, too, because in many ways they represent the before and the after of college hoops as we know them. There were a lot of people who inherently disliked the Vegas team, but there is no denying how dominant they were, and how much they cared. Even Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski concedes in the HBO piece that the UNLV team that steamrolled his by 30 in the ’90 title game was one of the two or three best teams ever assembled. And watch Tarkanian’s reaction as he recalls the ’91 team that wound up losing to Duke in the national semis, ending an undefeated dream.

You may not have liked them, or their coach, or the reputation that festered around them, but there was little denying this: They were a hell of a team to watch. And the interesting thing is, the Fab Five may well have usurped them because of their fashion sense and their personality (it’s no surprise that Rose and Webber are both prominent broadcasters now) — and yet they never did win a title together. Wasn’t it around that time that a hairy tennis player was telling us image is everything? To pick style over substance?

So for history’s sake, UNLV always will have the edge. For viewing sake? They make for damn good bookends. And for memory’s sake.

Just enjoy. We won’t see their like again.

WHACK BACK AT VAC

Michael Mitchell: Without any accountability, re-do or reprimand this gives every referee and official in America from CYO to the NBA the greenlight to make any terrible call they want. Let’s get the refs accountable!

VAC: I wish the Jim Joyce fiasco last summer would have resonated more, and it sure would have been helpful if the Big East would have let the crew from Wednesday’s St. John’s-Rutgers fiasco explain themselves.

John Siciliano: Just wondering: Will Mets fans at Citi Field have to return foul balls that go into the stands?

VAC: Fans old enough to remember know enough not to laugh. In her last season, ex-owner Lorinda deRoulet asked the same question . . . before she, and the Mets, were rescued by (among others) Fred Wilpon.

Thomas Cooney: In the brief time since Chauncey Billups joined the Knicks, I see it is quite apropos the nickname Mr. Big Shot. Conversely, based on his crunch time performances, would you think it also apropos for LeBron James to take the moniker “Miss The Big Shot?”

VAC: Or “Miss-es Big Shot.” Either works for me.

Richard Lense: In regards to the Yankees’ “Killer B” pitchers, Manny Banuelos and Dellin Betences, I keep hearing that they both need “seasoning;” well, my response to that is this: “Seasoning is for steaks!”

VAC: I can’t remember the last time I heard a spring camp buzzing so completely about a young player as it was about Banuelos. He’s fun to watch.

VAC’S WHACKS

* The flip side to all the joy evident in the “One Shining Moment” moments every March is the agony on seniors’ faces when the final horn of a final game hits. And when a college career ends the way D.J. Kennedy’s did the other day . . . it’s wrenching.

* I would like to think that somewhere the great Clair Bee is smiling about his LIU Blackbirds’ big revival.

* Of all the silliness the Mets have trafficked in across the past few years, nothing tops this goofy reluctance to part ways with Oliver Perez. Christy Mathewson is more likely to haunt the Mets this year, no matter where Ollie ends up. Can someone please sever this cord already?

* Barry Bonds’ trainer, Greg Anderson, is either the single most loyal friend in the history of friendship or the meal plan Inside is better than we have been led to believe.