With San Diego State’s 63-57 victory at Las Vegas just finished Saturday night, Aztecs coach Steve Fisher said, “It’s fantastic to be 25-1. We have a special team.”
Few coaches know special better than the 65-year-old Fisher. Named interim coach of the Michigan Wolverines at the start of the 1989 NCAA tournament when Bill Frieder was fired for having already accepted the Arizona State job, Fisher promptly guided the Maize and Blue to an unlikely national championship.
Three years later he assembled the most precocious team in the history of March Madness. His Fab Five class of Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson, Jimmy King and Jalen Rose reached the NCAA title game as both freshmen and sophomores before gradually going their separate ways.
But then a recruiting scandal centered on that class forced Fisher out of the Michigan job in 1997. Two years later he dusted himself off and accepted the San Diego State job, despite knowing that school had suffered through 13 losing seasons in the previous 14 winters.
“When you get fired, you go through all the emotions,” Fisher said. “Anger, self-pity, worrying about what’s going to be next. Then you get up and move on.”