COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA MEN’S TOURNAMENT : This Is the Freshmen Against the Transfers : Men’s Final Four: Michigan and Cincinnati have come a long way in a short time.

A year ago, neither Cincinnati nor Michigan made the 64-team field for the NCAA tournament.

Monday, one of them will play for the national championship.

Probably exceeding even their own coaches’ expectations, Cincinnati and Michigan have reached the Final Four and will meet today at the Metrodome in the semifinals.

Only three years ago, Cincinnati Coach Bob Huggins inherited a team that hadn’t played in the tournament since 1977 and was still operating under scholarship limitations mandated by a three-year NCAA probation.

He has reached this point with a team built around transfers.

Michigan was 14-15 last season, its second under Coach Steve Fisher, who brought a national title to Ann Arbor in his first three weeks on the job, but was then blown out in the second-round the next year by Loyola Marymount, 149-115, with most of the same players.

Fisher made it here with an all-freshman starting lineup.

“They’ve played pretty well and gotten too much publicity as the result of it,” Fisher said. “But they’re pretty good.

“They’ve surprised even me a little bit in that they’ve been able to withstand a lot of the pressures off the court to remain focused and tunnel-visioned. That’s been the big difference for us, as opposed to early. We’re able to maintain a concentration and be better listeners.”

In Cincinnati, the Bearcats have listened to Huggins, who vowed to take them to the Final Four when he was hired away from Akron.

He set no timetable.

“As soon as kids hear that you’re rebuilding, they think that’s an excuse for losing,” Huggins said.

The Bearcats hadn’t been to the Final Four since 1963, but Huggins was unwavering in his quest to take them back.

“I pretty much said coming in that if I didn’t believe that we could get to the Final Four, I didn’t know how our players could believe,” he said. “For three years, we’ve opened practice on Oct. 15 with the idea that (the Final Four) was the ultimate goal.

“I think sometimes that people are afraid to dream, afraid to have high expectations because they’re afraid of failure.”

Cincinnati (29-4) shared the Great Midwest Conference championship with DePaul before winning the conference tournament.

Led by forward Herb Jones, the Bearcats have won their last 10 games. A 6-foot-4 senior forward, Jones is averaging 18.2 points and 7.1 rebounds.

Cincinnati is 18-1 since guard Nick Van Exel was moved into the starting lineup. A transfer from Trinity Valley Junior College in Athens, Tex., Van Exel is averaging 12 points. Guard Anthony Buford, who transferred from Akron a year after Huggins left, is averaging 15.2 points.

The other three players among the Bearcats’ top six are from California--6-10 center Corie Blount from Monrovia High and Rancho Santiago College, 6-5 forward Terry Nelson from Long Beach Poly High and Long Beach City College, and sixth man Eric Martin, a 6-5 forward from Whittier Christian High and Rancho Santiago. Blount and Martin led Rancho Santiago to the state community college championship last season.

Michigan showed in December that it had the talent to reach the Final Four, taking Duke into overtime before losing, 88-85. But the Wolverines (24-8) were only 8-7 in the Big Ten before defeating Indiana on March 8 to start a seven-game winning streak.

“We got better as the season wore on,” Fisher said.

Jalen Rose, a 6-8 guard, is averaging 17.9 points, 4.1 rebounds and 4.1 assists. Chris Webber, a 6-9 forward, is averaging 15.6 points and 9.9 rebounds. Juwan Howard, a 6-9 center, is averaging 11.1 points.

The other starters are guard Jimmy King and forward Ray Jackson.

“Michigan is a great team,” Huggins said. “Steve has done a great job with them, molding the five freshmen into a unit that plays so well together and plays so hard and rebounds so well.

“It’s going to be a tremendous challenge for us. They’re just so much more athletic and a lot bigger than we are on the front line. We’ll have to find ways to create problems elsewhere.”

They have done it so far.

“They have found ways to create problems for everybody they’ve played,” Fisher said of the Bearcats. “We’ll have our hands full, too.”