OT: How Steve Fisher Cultivated a Juggernaut from Nothing
As we reflect on the current state of our basketball program, here is a very nice Washington Post article about the program that Steve Fisher built from ashes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/02/22/san-diego-state-mens-basketball/
February 22nd, 2024 at 1:26 PM ^
Some here think Dutcher would.come to AA but I say no. He's in a good spot in paradise...
February 22nd, 2024 at 1:43 PM ^
I doubt he would take the job here. He was very loyal to fisher as he did not take a HC job until fisher retired. he was an assistant at san deigo state for 18 years! Hes also 64 yo realistically only has 5 more years to coach. Would we want someone that old to fix the program only to have to start again in 5 years?
February 22nd, 2024 at 6:24 PM ^
The ship has sailed on Dutcher. He would be crazy to leave a cushy gig at SDSU at age 64 where he's basically the top dog (and where a national championship is attainable despite its mid-major status, as he proved with last year's tourney run) for a rebuilding project at a pressure cooker like Michigan.
February 22nd, 2024 at 1:46 PM ^
Pay walled so I don't know what the article says, but is San Diego State really a juggernaut?
February 22nd, 2024 at 3:59 PM ^
Valid. Juggernaut may be an exaggeration. But they made the championship game in 2023. And were a consensus #1 seed at 30-2 in 2020 before tourney was cx'd. 9 conference championships since 2006. Fisher went 386-209 there, for a 65% clip, which averages out to about 20-10 every year. I believe they won 4 games the year before he arrived.
February 22nd, 2024 at 7:29 PM ^
They'd whup our ass by 40
February 22nd, 2024 at 1:47 PM ^
I always felt Fisher was slightly overrated. He got some of the best athletes in the country made the tourney 6 times in 8 years and only hung 3 banners (one of them an NIT championship) during that time. Maybe had he still been the coach he would have done great things. I dont credit him for the national championship i, thats like crediting Moore with winning last years championship. Just my opinion
February 22nd, 2024 at 2:07 PM ^
It's literally not the same thing at all. Fisher took over at the end of the regular season and saw the team through the tournament. Moore coached the regular season, which if you are being honest, there's less room for error in football than basketball, so Moore keeping the team afloat through some of the toughest games was crucial. We could have fallen out of the top 4 if he didn't keep us undefeated.
February 22nd, 2024 at 2:23 PM ^
I disagree with your opinion. Fisher took over a team that had it's coach essentially tell them that they weren't pretty enough for him, and then get fired a day or two before the Tourney. He got those guys right, and coached them through the pressure cooker that is March Madness. That is Steve Fisher's National Championship.
February 22nd, 2024 at 2:29 PM ^
Bill Frieder would not have won that championship. He had some of the best teams in history and lost in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. Worst tourney coach ever.
February 22nd, 2024 at 4:01 PM ^
Yeah, I was a student then. I had zero interest in going to the games until Frieder was canned. Then I ended up driving both to Atlanta and Lexington for those four games. It's a little tougher to make it to Seattle by car unfortunately.
It did not help that in Frieder's last game as the Michigan coach Michigan got blitzed by Illinois in A2. The final score just doesn't quite do it justice.
February 22nd, 2024 at 5:19 PM ^
I was a 6th grader and went to Lexington and sat in student section for both OSU games that weekend. Would be wild if I was by you.
February 22nd, 2024 at 6:23 PM ^
OSU in Rupp was 1992. I was there for that too!
Virginia, Oklahoma, Michigan, North Carolina were in Rupp in 1989. I remember that too easily.
February 22nd, 2024 at 8:12 PM ^
Ah got it. Yeah 92 was an awesome experience. That elite 8 game was so awesome. Just a complete war.
February 22nd, 2024 at 4:06 PM ^
Agree. If Frieder is coaching, they don't make it past North Carolina. They possibly stumble against Xavier.
February 22nd, 2024 at 4:16 PM ^
Frieder was too nervous. The image I remember of him is sweaty, with a towel around his neck. His teams played tight and didn't make as deep a run as you'd think, given their talent.
Fisher had a calm demeanor, which was important for the championship run.
February 22nd, 2024 at 5:52 PM ^
Around his neck? More often than not it was in his mouth getting chewed on!
February 26th, 2024 at 5:40 AM ^
I agree and think winning the championship was a combination of Steve being calm and the "Us Against the World" mentality after losing their coach. Some obvious similarities to a football team this year, of course.
February 22nd, 2024 at 2:28 PM ^
Fisher won the NC. Granted the team was stacked, but they won it all.
Loyola Marymount was a freak occurrence. Hank Gather's ghost was on their side. They hit more threes than we had 2s. We were very good that year too.
Juwan was probably as responsible for the Fab 5 as Fisher was, but to my knowledge that was the first time something like that happened.
Reaching the finals with 5 freshman was crazy. Shock the World. We should have gotten subs.
Reaching the finals with 5 sophomores is pretty crazy as well.
The team wasn't the same without Webber, but we made the tourney.
Fab 5 #2 was pretty cool, but injuries and ??? derailed them.
The trajectory was downhill, but when you start at the top that's the only direction to go.
February 22nd, 2024 at 2:36 PM ^
I wonder: do our own fans know or remember that Steve Fisher had a brutal 1991 season?
Michigan went 14-15 season that season and was 8th out of 10 teams in the conference (back when the Big 10 was actually 10 teams).
Fab Five class led to success the next 3 seasons. We lost to the (eventual) National Champions each of those 3 seasons...dammit.
February 22nd, 2024 at 3:37 PM ^
That is because that team lost all 5 starters from the year before. This was well before transfer portals, etc... That 1991 team was Demetrius Calip, Michael Talley, and a bunch of role players that were getting a taste of their first year of playing at the college level.
February 22nd, 2024 at 4:09 PM ^
I'd say the Loyola Marymount game was team-wide dumbshittery (coaches and players). For whatever reason Michigan decided to play Loyola's game, rather than make any effort to dictate the pace.
February 22nd, 2024 at 4:34 PM ^
The team without Webber was still damn good. IIRC they played tournament favorite and national champion-winning Arkansas very close (lost by 4) in the Elite Eight, but they just didn't have enough to get over the hump against them. And Juwan Howard completely outplayed an overhyped Corliss Williamson.
February 22nd, 2024 at 6:25 PM ^
Howard got two quick fouls in that Arkansas game too. He looked like he was an All-American by the end of 1994.
February 22nd, 2024 at 5:01 PM ^
We did more than just make the tourney without Webber. We lost to the eventual champion, Arkansas, in the elite 8, in a game that could have gone either way (close until late).
February 24th, 2024 at 2:34 PM ^
They did more than make the tournament the year after Webber left. They made the Elite Eight, and if I recall correctly, that was a close game.
February 22nd, 2024 at 2:33 PM ^
Eh. Frieder certainly was responsible for putting that team together, but he had famously flamed out in previous NCAA tournaments (though the team did ok the year before, to be fair). Fisher was able to handle the ever-increasing tournament pressure well, and to help his players negotiate it.
It's a divided credit, to be sure, but to suggest Fisher was only some kind of symbolic figurehead is to dismiss the value of in-tournament coaching altogether. That's surely not right.
Not to mention ... Fisher then put together the Fab Five and took a team that started all freshmen to the NCAA Finals ... then followed that up with another trip he following year.
So ... recruiting, results, and class? That's enough for me.
February 22nd, 2024 at 6:27 PM ^
I always thought that Fisher was underrated as a coach. I thought he was over his head with the Ed Martin situation.
February 22nd, 2024 at 6:43 PM ^
It's unbelievable to me that no one has mentioned the Ed Martin scandal. It was on Fisher's watch that Martin weaseled his way into the program. Martin, for those unaware, wasn't any ordinary booster whose activities would have been completely above board in the post-NIL era. He was a shady, predatory dude who ran an illegal seven-figure gambling operation out of his house. That's why the FBI was involved. When the FBI raided his house, they found loaded guns and wads of cash totaling five figures.
Fisher not only allowed Martin access to the program, he arranged for free tickets and hotel rooms for Martin and his family. And he forged Perry Watson's initials on the approval forms. You can't convince me that Fisher didn't know what Martin was all about or that he had no idea about the extent of Martin's association with his players.
Contrast that with the late John Thompson (legendary former Georgetown coach). When Thompson caught wind that a notorious DC druglord (who had been tied to at least 40 murders in and around DC) was associating with his players, he summoned the druglord to his office and sternly warned him to stay away from the program or else. That's leadership.
February 22nd, 2024 at 8:31 PM ^
You have decided to believe Watson. I believe Fisher. And, in any event, Martin had been around the program a long time before Fisher took over. Remember the birthday cake he brought to Terry Mills' house when Frieder was there?
February 22nd, 2024 at 4:19 PM ^
Bring back Dutch!!!