HOUSTON — Thirty years ago, a group of disrupters with baggy shorts and black socks changed college basketball as we know it while taking a good slice of American culture along for the ride.
Those Michigan freshmen known as the Fab Five ended up one win short of the NCAA men’s title, which is exactly where San Diego State — a team coached by a former Fab Five assistant, Brian Dutcher — finds itself in 2023 during another transformative period in college hoops.
The Aztecs (32-6) don’t intend to change the game or the culture when they face the University of Connecticut (30-8) in the title showdown at 9:20 p.m. Monday on CBS. But the fact that they’re in the NCAA final — a team with Michigan bloodlines that was forged quickly through the newly liberated transfer portal and enriched by opportunities from name, image and likeness deals — speaks volumes about where those Fab Five superstars were trying to take the game three decades ago.
“We got to college and started understanding the hypocrisy in the game, with the schools making millions and us sitting around poor as hell,” said Ray Jackson, who was part of the Fab Five freshmen as a guard for that 1991-92 Michigan team. “We wanted to change the dynamics of that, get the athletes feeling empowered a little more.”
The coach who essentially built the 21st century version of the Aztecs was Steve Fisher, Dutcher’s longtime boss at both Michigan and San Diego State. Fisher made his way to the West Coast after losing his job at Michigan in the wake of one of the most complex and sordid illicit benefits scandals in NCAA history.
In essence, Fisher, who retired and handed over the San Diego State reins to Dutcher in 2017, got caught up in a series of events that, frankly, wouldn’t be frowned upon nearly as harshly today. Back then, it was a shady booster with gambling ties trying to funnel money to players. These days, sports gambling is legal in many states (the NCAA brought the Sweet 16 to Las Vegas for the first time this year), while everyone from car dealers to social media conglomerates pay players in the open.
Fisher is in Houston this week, hanging with his son, Mark, a special assistant for the fifth-seeded Aztecs.
“I had the ability to close my eyes and dream, and dream of this, to be honest with you,” Fisher said.
Reaching the Final Four wasn’t so much a dream as an expectation for the Fab Five — Jackson, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King, Jalen Rose and Chris Webber — considered by many to be the most electric single recruiting class in men’s college basketball history.
They showed up at Michigan in 1991 and made not one but two appearances in the national title game. They got blown out by Duke in 1992 with Blue Devis star Bobby Hurley, the brother of current UConn coach Dan Hurley, doing some of the damage. In 1993, it was Webber’s costly timeout when the Wolverines didn’t have one that made the difference in a close loss to North Carolina.
So, no title, but the Fab Five ended up with something perhaps bigger: They opened the world to embracing the style they brought to the playground, all while making an indelible statement about the way they felt college players should be treated.
“We just wanted to be transcendent,” Jackson said. “We wanted to bring the culture we came from, which was street basketball, community basketball, and bring that fun back to game.”
They also ended up as successes after college, building careers in worlds as diverse as nonprofit, finance, TV and even coaching; Howard just finished his fourth season as coach of the Wolverines.
“Isn’t that the end goal, when the ball stops bouncing, you’re doing something that’s productive with your life?” said Dutcher, who has heard from everyone in the group during his program’s first run to the cusp of a title.
In many ways, Dutcher’s group came together in the polar opposite fashion as the Fab Five. San Diego State’s starters came from different places at different times. They could separate themselves from the Michigan greats in another way if they can win the title that eluded Dutcher & Co. for all those years.
It’s a tall task.
The Aztecs are coming off an emotionally and physically taxing 72-71 win over No. 9 seed Florida Atlantic on Saturday night. When Lamont Butler hit the winner, it marked the first time in Final Four history that a buzzer-beating shot took a team from trailing to a victory.
In addition to having to bounce back, there is the next opponent. Nobody has come within double digits of fourth-seeded UConn during the tournament, including fifth-seeded Miami, which lost 72-59 in Saturday’s second semifinal. Adama Sanogo has averaged 20 points and nearly 10 rebounds a game for the Huskies in their five tourney games.
“We don’t stop,” UConn guard Jordan Hawkins said after scoring 13 points against Miami. “We keep putting our foot on their neck. We have a really tough team.”