NCAA MEN’S BASKETBALL FINAL : Who Is Watching the Kids? : Tonight’s game: Duke got a scare from Michigan in December. Now, the rematch.

It was supposed to be another in a long and undistinguished line of made-for-TV games--Duke vs. Michigan, filler for a Saturday afternoon in mid-December.

Here’s what was supposed to happen:

The No. 1-ranked Blue Devils would travel to Ann Arbor’s Crisler Arena, do a little tap dance on the freshmen egos of the Michigan Fab Five, hop on the Duke charter flight and be back in Durham in time for a late-evening frat mixer.

Instead, the defending national champions were lucky to escape with an 88-85 overtime victory, to say nothing of their top ranking. Tap dance? Tell it to Duke’s Grant Hill, who, after gushing about the talent-rich Wolverines, admitted that Duke should have lost the game.

Freshman egos? Chris Webber scored 27 points that day, many of them with monster slams. Jalen Rose scored 18 points in the second half. Jimmy King added 15 points. Juwan Howard had eight rebounds. Do that against Duke and you’ve earned the right to pop off, which is exactly what Webber and Rose and the rest of them did while they threw a scare into the Blue Devils.

“I wasn’t really expecting them to play the way they did,” Duke forward Antonio Lang said.

Now, five months later, Duke (33-2) and Michigan (25-8) meet again. In December, they played for respect. In April, they play for a national championship, and with it, a piece of NCAA history.

No longer a matchup contrived for TV, tonight’s 6:22 game at the Metrodome has become a matchup for the ages. By accident or simple twists of fate, the tournament has delivered two teams capable of the improbable, maybe the impossible.

For Duke, the record book awaits. Already the Blue Devils have edged themselves closer to the near-mystical postseason reputation of UCLA. This is Duke’s fifth consecutive appearance in the Final Four, its sixth in the last seven years. And in each of the last three seasons, the Blue Devils have reached the championship game. It is the kind of streak that prompts mayors to issue keys to the city and change street names (“Coach Krzyzewski Circle?”).

Duke has become the longest-running NCAA show since John Wooden graced a sideline. A victory tonight and it becomes the first team to earn consecutive national championships since the Bruins won seven in a row from 1967-73.

All told, only five schools have successfully defended their championships.

“It would be the ultimate feeling to go out on a winning note,” said center Christian Laettner, whose Duke playing career ends this evening.

Laettner has never known anything but Final Four appearances. Four seasons, four trips to the Final Four. The same goes for senior teammate Brian Davis, who probably will miss tonight’s game because of an ankle sprain suffered against Indiana in the semifinal.

But guard Bobby Hurley has the most impressive streak: seven consecutive years of playing in the final game of a season--four high school state championship appearances, three NCAA championship visits.

Michigan’s legacy has yet to be defined. So far, the Wolverines are known as the team with five freshmen starters who win not in spite of their youth, but because of it. The Wolverines simply don’t know any better.

“They’re going to come in here playing loose,” Michigan Coach Steve Fisher said.

Said Rose: “There’s a payback factor involved.”

If the Wolverines are awed by the surroundings, they don’t show it. Nothing is sacred--not Duke and certainly not Fisher, who, with a victory against the Blue Devils, will have earned as many national championships as Krzyzewski and North Carolina’s Dean Smith combined: two. In 1989, the Bo Schembechler-appointed Fisher led another Michigan team to a title that people insisted couldn’t be won.

This year’s team doesn’t seem impressed. During a Sunday ride from their team hotel to another hotel for a late-morning news conference, a playful Rose couldn’t help himself. As a guide pointed out the various Final Four hotels, Rose asked Fisher, “Hey, Coach, where’d you stay last year at the Final Four?”

Fisher wasn’t anywhere last year; the Wolverines finished 13-14. Now look at them, one victory from what could be considered the most incredible championship team in what, decades?

If Michigan is to win, it must find a way to stop Laettner, who scored 24 points the last time the teams met; and Hurley, who scored 26. The Wolverines also must continue to get solid performances from reserve center Eric Riley and backup forward James Voskuil. Riley took over for an ineffective Webber in Michigan’s tournament victory over Oklahoma State, and Voskuil provided the Wolverines with a much-needed boost against Cincinnati in the Final Four semifinal.

“Had it not been for more than the five freshmen, we would not have been able to survive,” Fisher said.

Duke can relate. Unless Davis’ ankle heals sufficiently, the Blue Devils will be without their best defender and perhaps their most vocal player. If Davis is unable to play, Duke’s matchup problems increase. Grant Hill is moved into the starting lineup and freshman center Cherokee Parks and guard Marty Clark are bumped higher into the rotation. How they respond will go a long way in determining the Blue Devils’ chances.

But Duke is no stranger to adversity. Hurley was injured earlier in the season, and yet, the Blue Devils won. Grant Hill was hurt and they won. Now they discover if they can overcome Davis’ probable absence and the Michigan freshmen.

Way back in December, after Duke beat the Wolverines, Webber’s mother made a prediction. She told her son, who thought he had cost Michigan the game by making several costly errors and then fouling out, that there would be a rematch.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You’re going to play Duke in the tournament.”

She was right. Mothers always are.