NCAA Basketball Championship: Seton Hall vs. Michigan : Long Road Ends Tonight : With Unlikely March Over, Michigan and Seton Hall Get the Final Call

P.J. Carlesimo has been gone so long, so unexpectedly long, that he had to call the doorman at his apartment building to have him take in the overflowing mail.

Seton Hall left South Orange, N.J., on March 14, and the Pirates have been on the road since.

The days of March also held far more than could have been imagined for Steve Fisher, the Michigan man who became coach just two days before the Wolverines’ first-round game. Now, the slow-speaking coach who describes himself as “plain vanilla” is a victory away from becoming the first rookie coach to win a national championship.

“Once again, yes, it’s like a dream,” Fisher said. “Don’t wake me until Tuesday.”

One way or another, the road--and one team’s dream--will end tonight when Seton Hall plays Michigan for the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. championship in the Kingdome.

One team will win its first NCAA championship, and one will go home with second place. Michigan has played for the championship twice--in 1965 and 1976--and lost both times. Seton Hall is in the NCAA final for the first time.

It is a game that will pit the overwhelming athleticism of a Michigan team that has tended to underachieve against a Seton Hall team so balanced that its leading scorer--John Morton--may be one of the lesser known starters.

It will pit Fisher, a folksy man who will have to wait until after the season ends to learn if Athletic Director Bo Schembechler will hire him, against Carlesimo, the quick wit with the New York accent born to say the words basketball in the Garden , who swears that it wouldn’t matter who coached these teams.

While many people still press for an answer to the unanswerable question--Would Michigan be here if Bill Frieder were still the coach?--Carlesimo tends to think he and Fisher are both nice guys, but that the teams are the thing.

“We’re here because we have the best players in the country,” Carlesimo said of his own team. “I understand how overrated a head coach’s role is. If I couldn’t coach tomorrow, my assistants could do the job just as well. I’m not belittling the job Steve has done at all. To handle the pressure and do the things he’s done, that’s been the hard part. The Xs and Os, anybody knew Fish could do that. But they have great players. With Bill or with Steve, I think they’d be here.”

Last year’s championship matched Kansas and Oklahoma, two Big Eight teams who had seen each other play so much they were sick and tired of it. This year, Michigan (29-7) plays Seton Hall (31-6), a school only two Michigan starters--Rumeal Robinson and Mike Griffin--could locate before the tournament began.

As late as midday Sunday, the players knew little more of each other than a few names--the Michigan players mostly knew Andrew Gaze and Ramon Ramos, and Seton Hall players knew Glen Rice and Robinson, the point guard. But by the time practices were over, they knew plenty.

The Michigan players had seen the beginning of Seton Hall’s semifinal against Duke Saturday at their hotel before they left for the Kingdome to play Illinois in the second semifinal. Before they got on the bus, Seton Hall was down 18 points.

When they got to the Kingdome, Seton Hall was ahead. Michigan was impressed.

“I saw Seton Hall has a lot of class,” Terry Mills said.

Seton Hall, after finishing showers and interviews, caught only the second half of Michigan’s game against Illinois, including Sean Higgins’ game-winning basket off an offensive rebound.

“I saw only the last part of the game,” Gaze said. “That team can play.”

Carlesimo looks at Michigan and sees a team that he calls “scary,” especially at forward, where Rice and Terry Mills play.

“I don’t mind playing a team that’s bigger than us if we’re quicker, or quicker than us if we’re stronger,” Carlesimo said. “The thing that’s scary about Michigan is the combination of all three--size, strength and quickness--they present. . . . They’re very, very well coached, they play good defense, they get the ball up and down the floor, they shoot the ball very well outside, and they can be an awesome rebounding team. But that’s the kind of team you’re going to play if you play for the national championship.”

It is a game likely to present some charged matchups.

At point guard, Michigan’s Robinson will go against Seton Hall’s Gerald Greene, who kept the Pirates in the game with his penetration against Duke.

Seton Hall will have to contend with Rice, who averages 25 points a game and who gets a vote for player of the year from Fisher.

“He’s been as good as any player in America, maybe better than any player in America in the last five games,” Fisher said.

Gaze, or perhaps John Morton, is likely to draw the defensive assignment on Rice.

“I know I’ll have my hands full,” Gaze said.

Talented as it is, Michigan has not played this well all season.

“We’ve all heard that statement that we don’t play hard all the time, that Michigan doesn’t play 40 minutes,” Rice said. “Hopefully we can prove our character is solid.”

In the past, Higgins said, Michigan’s abundance of athletic ability sometimes hampered the team.

“When you play on a team with a bunch of All-Americans out of high school, you find that you would wait for someone else to jump on the floor for a loose ball, wait for someone else to do it,” Higgins said. “Last year, we waited for Gary Grant. This year a lot of us were waiting for Glen.”

But long about the end of the season, and most notedly long about the beginning of the tournament, Michigan started playing its best.

“In the past, for whatever reason, it’s true, we have had sub-par performances in the tournament,” center Loy Vaught said. “Our main goal is to silence all the critics. With one more win, I don’t see how anybody can criticize us.”

Seton Hall, by contrast, has no players with brilliant individual reputations--at least not outside of the Olympics.

“Because of the fact that our kids play unselfishly and because of the fact that defense is a big part of our game and because of our depth, it hurts their individual recognition,” Carlesimo said.

It’s a team that can play as well with Anthony Avent, Michael Cooper and Frantz Volcy in off the bench, as it can with the starting lineup of Greene, Morton, Ramos, Gaze and Daryll Walker.

And perhaps more than anything, it is a team that appreciates its good fortune.

“Any of the teams we’ve played in the past three or four games could be here,” Carlesimo said. “Indiana, UNLV, Duke. . . . This tournament has become a situation where 15, 20, maybe 25 teams have a legitimate chance when it starts to win the whole thing. To win six games, you have to be very, very good and very, very lucky.”

INSIDE THE FINAL TWO

WHO: Seton Hall (31-6) vs. Michigan (29-7).

WHEN: Today, 6:10 p.m.

WHERE: Kingdome, Seattle

TV: Channel 2 and 8

MIKE DOWNEY: Michigan’s Rumeal Robinson is a master of his craft on and off the basketball court. Column, Page 12.

NOTES: Interim Coach Steve Fisher’s job remains in limbo at Michigan. Story, Page 13.