A Fab Finish? : Michigan’s Starters, Freshmen in Name Only, Have the Talent to Win It All

An all-freshman starting lineup is at college basketball’s World Series, a place where you get to go, supposedly, only when you have achieved maturity and experience.

Seasoning, they used to call it. If you weren’t seasoned, you were too green.

But now, as Michigan’s “Fab Five” has shown, you can also get there by simply being good . . . very good.

So maybe all those lectures we have heard from coaches on the importance of maturity and experience have been overdone.

Just the other day, one-time Ohio State star Larry Siegfried recalled a point he once heard made by Bill Russell, when Russell was coaching the Boston Celtics:

“I was in a conversation with him once about experience and he said to me: ‘Experience don’t mean diddly. It’s, ‘Can you get it done?’ ”

Michigan’s freshman starters, by the way, no longer consider themselves freshmen, at least not in an athletic sense. They made that clear last weekend in Lexington, Ky., where they put away, in order, Oklahoma State, 75-72, and Ohio State, 75-71, in overtime, in the Southeast regional.

Jalen Rose, a fine defensive player, talked about Michigan’s two regular-season defeats against Ohio State. Most painful, he said, was a 77-66 loss March 3 at Columbus, a game Michigan had in hand until the Wolverines kicked it away in the final three minutes with a blizzard of turnovers.

According to Rose, that was the day they came of age.

“We always look back to that Columbus game, no matter who we’re playing,” Rose said. “We came together as a team in that loss--we learned 35 minutes of good basketball isn’t enough, that you need 40.”

Rose, a 6-foot-8 swingman from Detroit, leads his young teammates in scoring with an 18-point average and in assists with four per game but is also sent after the opposition’s top scorer.

Against Oklahoma State at Lexington, Rose held Byron Houston to two baskets in 14 shots and scored 25 points. Against Ohio State, he held Chris Jent to two for 12 and scored 20 points.

Underneath, Michigan is big, strong, aggressive and high-leaping. Chris Webber, 6-9 and 240, throws down frightening dunks. Juwan Howard, also 6-9 and 240, is a formidable rebounder and defensive player. Jimmy King is a 6-5 shooting guard from Texas and Ray Jackson is a 6-6 forward.

Usually, first off the bench is 7-foot, 230-pound junior Eric Riley.

This team came together far more quickly than anyone in Ann Arbor dared hope.

In their fifth game, Michigan’s freshmen played national champion Duke virtually even, losing in overtime, 88-85.

They were rocky in midseason, losing seven Big Ten games--the last one the 77-66 crusher at Ohio State. But five days later, they beat Indiana by eight at Bloomington.

In Lexington, it seemed they had arrived. In two close games against good teams, they were nearly awesome at their best, yet cool and patient when things didn’t go their way.

So, should anyone be shocked that five talented freshmen can reach the Final Four?

That was asked of three coaches this week:

--Fred Taylor, who coached a 1960 Ohio State team to an NCAA championship with three starting sophomores.

--John Wooden, who coached two sophomore-dominated teams to NCAA titles.

--Steve Fisher, who this weekend in Minneapolis has an opportunity to surpass both with his five freshman starters.

Taylor, Ohio State’s coach from 1959 to 1976, is 67 and manages a golf club outside Columbus, Ohio.

“The thing you have to remember about basketball players being young and good is that they all come to college having been given support,” he said.

“In other words, their teammates and coaches helped them become high school stars. But on the collegiate level, they become experienced when they learn how to give support. That’s why this Michigan club has become so good so quickly--they’ve learned how to help each other.

“Another thing about Michigan--the pressure is off their coach (Fisher), because they’ve already done much better than anyone would have expected. So he’s coaching with confidence. He’s loose.

“And those kids have been through a tough Big Ten season, they’re not really freshmen now. They’re upperclassmen now, big time. All they have to do is polish the factors that got them where they are.

“When my 1960 club won it all, Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek and Mel Nowell were sophomores. And they were really inexperienced players. In those days, freshmen not only couldn’t play, we didn’t even have freshman teams.

“The freshmen were only allowed to play the varsity six times in the season, the football team once and the intramural all-stars once.

“Jeeminy Christmas--I can’t believe those dunks by Chris Webber. They remind me of Wilt Chamberlain’s dunks. I remember I once asked Havlicek why no one ever blocked any of Wilt’s dunks in the NBA.

“He said: ‘Coach, you have no idea how strong he is. He’d break your arm on the rim if you tried to block him.’ ”

Wooden, whose Bruins won NCAA titles with teams led by sophomores Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton, said he would always pick talent over experience, given the choice.

“Talent is always more important than experience, but you’d like to have both,” he said.

“The Michigan players aren’t freshmen anymore, not in a basketball sense. They’ve just been through a tough Big Ten season and now they’ve had some tournament pressure.

“Early in the season, when they really were a freshman team, they played Duke and almost won.

“Steve Fisher has done a remarkable job--he’s got them playing so well together. I give them a very good chance in the Final Four.”

The concept of five freshmen powering their way to the Final Four has startled their coach, however. Fisher was asked if he could have imagined any all-freshman unit making it this far.

“No, honestly, I couldn’t have,” he said.

“But this is a special group of kids. These are very smart, very talented, very cool kids. Still, I’m a little surprised at the stability they’ve shown. People have said all season they’re inconsistent.

“Well, who isn’t? That’s college basketball. You run hot and cold.

“The best thing these kids are doing now are their practices. They’re preparing themselves mentally in practice much better than they did earlier in the year.”

As for experience? It’s overrated, said Siegfried, one of Taylor’s players with the 1960 Buckeyes.

“It’s the most overemphasized thing in sports,” he said.

“After you get pounded on the head a couple of times, you either wise up or you get out. Just because they’re freshmen, what does it really mean? I see seniors making the same mistakes freshmen make.

“Give the coach credit. All he had to do with those kids was teach them how to play with each other, and he did it.”

As for that early March game at Columbus, Fisher said the defeat left an undefinable mark on his team.

“We’ve been a different team, a much better team since then,” he said. “I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but I could sense a difference, a certain feeling they had about themselves after that.”

So with such a good young team, won’t Fisher have difficulty recruiting after this season?

“Probably,” he said. “We did sign one kid early, Dugan Fife, a Michigan high school kid whose dad played for Michigan. But we probably won’t sign another recruit this year.”