COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA MEN’S TOURNAMENT : Michigan’s Kids Looking Well Past Ohio State : Southeast Regional: Five freshmen are not intimidated by two previous losses to the Buckeyes.

The “Fab Five” met the media Saturday, and their coach, Steve Fisher, couldn’t bear to watch. Well, he wasn’t allowed to, anyway.

Protocol had it that Michigan’s five freshman starters, the morning after their 75-72 victory over Oklahoma State, would talk to a hundred or so reporters about their chances today against Ohio State in the Southeast Regional championship game.

Fisher waited outside the room, pacing.

Someone asked : “Guys, could each of you answer yes or no to this question: Do you all expect to win four consecutive national championships at Michigan?”

Without hesitation, Jimmy King, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard and Ray Jackson answered “Yes.” The last man on the table, leading scorer and rebounder Chris Webber, smiled and looked at those down the line, as if wondering if this had already gone too far. But after some hesitation, he said: “Yes.”

Then Howard added: “Anyone who’d answered ‘no’ to that question, we don’t need them around.”

Bold talk, one could say--particularly in view of the fact that Ohio State (26-5) is 2-0 against Michigan (23-8) this season.

Later, Fisher came in to the head table, as his players filed out.

“I’m almost afraid to ask what they told you,” he said.

“Well, coach,” a reporter said, “they told us they were going to win four national championships in a row.”

Fisher, with a rueful smile, simply closed his eyes.

For all their confidence, the Michigan freshmen also acknowledged they have much to learn--using the previous losses to Ohio State examples.

“We were up by five points at Ohio State in that last game (March 3) with three minutes left, and we learned a valuable lesson,” Webber said.

“We took a couple of bad shots and we had two turnovers in the last minute, and we lost (77-66). We learned basketball is a 40-minute game. Thirty-five minutes of great basketball won’t do it at this level.”

On Friday, Webber had a bad night. In foul trouble, he played only 18 minutes. But when the final horn sounded, he ran up to Howard, who held Oklahoma State’s Byron Houston to a two-for-14 shooting night, and embraced his teammate.

“I congratulated him on a great job on Houston,” Webber said. “Houston’s a great player. He’ll be a great NBA player. I said to him: ‘If anyone ever says Houston is a better player than you, they never saw you play the game of basketball.’ ”

Fisher called his players “extremely talented and fearful of nothing. They know they have a lot to learn and they’re eager to learn. They’re smart, they like each other, and they’re easy to teach.”

Both Fisher and Ohio State Coach Randy Ayers said that the Buckeyes’ two victories over Michigan won’t matter much today.

“We won’t be thinking of those two games and I don’t think they will, either,” Fisher said. “And Randy won’t be looking at a lot of film, and I won’t either. We know what they’ll try to do and they know what we’ll try to do. It’ll be all execution. To win Sunday, we’ll need our best game of the season, and even then we’ll have to be a little lucky.”

Ohio State’s players spoke of limiting Michigan’s offensive rebounds.

“We’ll first try to keep them from getting the ball into the post, then, when they do, we’ll try to stop them from getting second and third shots off the glass,” said Jim Jackson, whose first two minutes of the second half Friday set the tempo for the Buckeyes’ 80-73 victory over North Carolina.

How will Ohio State stop Michigan inside? “We’ve got to box people out,” forward Chris Jent said. “They’ve got two 6-9, 240-pound guys in there, and we can’t let them muscle us.”

Then he smiled and added: “I can’t do it, but Lawrence (Funderburke) can.”