Nothing Fab about It

We’re guessing the confident smile on Coach Steve Fisher’s face was flashed by the ghosts who preceded him, that processional of professionals who cruised rented convertibles through the palm-treed campus of San Diego State and figured this was Shangri-layup.

Don’t know how the others messed this up, but I bet they name the gym after me.

An outsider could conclude this after a stroll on a sun-soaked December day, the grounds awash in sights and sounds of youth.

Couldn’t a guy assemble a first-class recruiting class with a few phone calls and a fish-net heave?

In reality, the basketball program has long been a temptress, a fool’s gold foray, a black hole.

Abandon all hoop, all ye who enter here.

San Diego State has rolled out a ball every year since 1921 and has made three NCAA tournament appearances, all losses, the last in 1985.

The Aztecs have posted one winning season in the last 14.

The shipyard-town school knocks out basketball coaches--an average of one every 3.75 years since 1969-- almost as fast as catamarans.

The school still surfs the coattails of former guard Tony Gwynn, who still holds the school’s assist record with 18 and who still shares, along with Michael Cage, the dubious distinction of being the only Aztec basketball players anyone has ever given two hoots about.

San Diego State basketball drove coach Jim Brandenburg (1987-92) into the nursing business. When a local reporter rooted out the former coach for a comment on Fisher’s hiring, Brandenburg barked back to a message machine: “I want to know how you got my number.”

And then there’s poor Fred Trenkle, who led last year’s 4-22 debacle and resigned after an 86-38 loss at Utah.

Why is Fisher going to be different?

“Why?” Fisher, seated in his plush second-story office, says. “I asked myself the same questions. Why did Jim Brandenburg and the others not win like they thought they would? Because there have been some good coaches that have come through here.”

None, of course, with the pedigree of Fisher, probably the school’s last best chance for success.

“I’m not going to say if it doesn’t happen when Steve and I are here together that it can’t happen,” Athletic Director Rick Bay says. “You never say never but, clearly, this is kind of a crossroads.”

The Fisher King

Fisher brings to an empty table what no other San Diego State coach has:

Instant credibility.

Two words on his resume, “Fab Five,” still resonate with kids on playgrounds.

Before Aerick Sanders signed a letter of intent to attend San Diego State next fall, he asked Fisher to sign the “Fab Five” book, which chronicled Michigan’s storied freshman class of 1991-92.

Now that’s clout.

Fisher’s story, like many, began as fairy tale but ended grimly. He labored for 20 years as an assistant before becoming an overnight success in 1989 when, before the NCAA tournament, word leaked that Michigan Coach Bill Frieder had accepted the Arizona State job. A furious Bo Schembechler, then Michigan’s athletic director, all but chased Frieder off campus and promoted Fisher, Frieder’s top assistant, on the spot.

Six victories later, Fisher and the Wolverines were national champions.

In 1991-92, Fisher procured one of the most ballyhooed freshman classes in history--Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Jalen Rose, Ray Jackson and Jimmy King--and dared to start all five.

With his freshman lineup, Michigan advanced to the championship game before losing to Duke.

The next year, the “Fab Five” sophomores returned to the title game, losing to North Carolina.

In eight seasons in Ann Arbor, Fisher went 184-82 and 20-6 in the NCAA tournament. With top assistant Brian Dutcher, who has joined him in San Diego, Michigan annually reaped the nation’s top recruiting classes.

“He’s a great recruiter,” says Clipper forward Maurice Taylor, who played for Fisher at Michigan. “A lot of coaches didn’t like to over-recruit. Fish just wanted 10 guys who could play and just let them fight it out in practice. Sometimes it didn’t work for some players, but I think it’s the best.”

The music stopped in October 1997 when, in the wake of a brewing scandal involving Michigan booster Ed Martin, Fisher was fired.

“He was basically the fall guy,” Taylor contends.

Fisher says he was wrongfully dismissed, and there are many supporters of his claim.

“What I’ve tried to do is move on and have it get further in the rear-view mirror as you move on,” Fisher says.

San Diego What?

Fisher has already changed the face of Aztec basketball.

Compare and contrast:

Since 1950, 17 San Diego State players have been drafted professionally. In eight years at Michigan, Fisher produced 12 players who were either first- or second-round NBA draft picks.

Bradley Jackson, a freshman guard, never would have considered San Diego State before Fisher, he says, and probably would have needed a Thomas Guide to find it.

“I’d never really, like, heard of it,” Jackson says.

Never heard of San Diego State? You grew up in Inglewood?

“Well, not that much,” he says. “I knew there was a San Diego State. I never knew they had an arena. I never really thought of it as a basketball school. I knew that Marshall Faulk played here. That’s about it.”

This is what Fisher is up against.

Fisher has already proved he can still cast a mean recruiting net, though, signing San Diego high school star Chris Walton, youngest son of Bill, who becomes maybe the first kid ever to turn down a UCLA scholarship to attend San Diego State.

Symbolically, it was like Captain Ahab landing Moby Dick.

“No question,” Fisher says. “That made national news.”

For the first time in school history, Fisher and Bay contend, the Aztecs now have the ammunition to compete.

“I have all the bullets for the gun the others did not have,” Fisher says of his predecessors.

By bullets, Fisher means unwavering support from his athletic director and a state-of-the-art arena, the 3-year-old Cox Arena at Aztec Bowl.

‘I think we have, arguably the best college basketball facility on the West Coast,” Bay says of the 12,000-seat arena. “And now we have the coach worthy of that facility.”

So how come no one’s beating down the doors?

Fisher’s home debut, a Nov. 24 victory over UC Riverside, drew 2,697 fans, which had to come as cultural shock for a coach who spent two decades in the rabid Big Ten.

Fisher, 54, knows it’s going to take long hours and long arms to change perceptions.

“When I leave here it’s usually dark,” he says. “My goal is not to retire at the racetrack at Del Mar. I want this program to go, and win.”

It won’t happen this year. The Aztecs are 2-3 after a 72-57 victory over South Carolina State Thursday night.

Hired in March, Fisher didn’t have much time to restock a team that won four games last year, and his top recruit, junior college transfer Jim Roban, has been ruled out for the season because of a back injury.

San Diego State’s 28-point loss to San Diego on Dec. 4 was the most lopsided in the rivalry’s history.

Bay says San Diego State may be hard-pressed to match last year’s win total.

“I’m not kidding myself,” Bay says. “The mountain is steep, but it can be climbed more easily in basketball than football.”

Fish Comes to Bay

Fisher was not the school’s first choice.

Bay, in fact, had tendered an offer to Utah’s Rick Majerus last spring when Frieder called to recommend Fisher, who spent last year as an assistant coach with the NBA’s Sacramento Kings.

Bay invited Fisher down for a visit anyway, but confessed, “I’m on this track, and there’s no getting off it until I hear from Majerus.”

When Majerus decided to stay at Utah, Bay says he was almost relieved, believing Fisher to be a better fit.

“To some degree, Rick approaches his job more like an independent contractor,” Bay says. “As an administrator, I don’t want coaches to be independent contractors.”

Before hiring a coach he would pay $305,000 a year for six years, however, Bay had homework to do. Fisher left a mess at Michigan, with stories of booster Martin’s alleged cash payment to players growing more sordid each day.

“Everyone says about Ed Martin, ‘You should have known, you should have known. Why didn’t you tell me?’ ” Fisher says. “I didn’t know.”

Fisher says he was vigilant about protecting his team from sleaze merchants, maintaining it was his idea to keep registration records of all cars owned by his players.

As the controversy expanded, Michigan commissioned an outside law firm to investigate. The report, seven months in the making, cited only three “minor” violations on Fisher’s watch. The infractions, Fisher says, included giving one of his players, Robert Traylor, a birthday cake and providing his mother a ride to a game.

Fisher, though, knew he was in trouble when Michigan replaced its president and athletic director, both supporters.

“All the pieces at the top changed,” he says. “The king of hearts became the queen of spades.”

And Fisher got aced out.

He says he was railroaded.

“Call me a bad coach, call me whatever you want,” he says. “But don’t call me dishonest.”

To protect his interests, Bay interviewed Bernard Machen, who conducted Michigan’s internal investigation of the Martin controversy. Machen has since left the school to become president at the University of Utah.

“I was satisfied when the person who ran the internal investigation said [Fisher] never should have been fired,” Bay says of his conversation with Machen. “He said there was nothing malicious, or any type of cover-up. Yes, you could say Steve should have known more than he did, but he was satisfied Steve tried hard to get to the bottom of it.”

Bay told Fisher he would have to address openly the Michigan matter, which Fisher has done.

“The point is,” Fisher says, “if you sit in the captain’s seat, you’re the guy who has to answer questions.”

Fisher remained bitter about his firing for months, but says his low-pressure season with Sacramento, where he was reunited with Fab Fiver Webber, was a liberating experience.

“Yet, every day is part of your legacy,” Fisher says. “And the Michigan piece, from beginning to end, is part of my legacy.”

Fisher says he wouldn’t trade the experience.

“My older boy gave me a country-western tape, and there’s one song on there called ‘The Dance,’ ” Fisher says. “It’s basically a guy talking about his divorce. If you could know beforehand it would have ended up the way it did, would you want to go through the whole process?

“And his line, appropriate to me, is, ‘You would have missed the pain, but you would have missed the dance.’ ”

“I listen to that a lot.”

Good thing.

Given the task at hand, more pain is in the immediate forecast.

But maybe, someday, under Fisher, San Diego State will dance again.

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Hail to a Victor

Steve Fisher, 54, ranks second among active coaches with a winning percentage of .769 (20-6) in NCAA tournament games. A closer look:

AT MICHIGAN

* Joined staff in 1982 under coach Bill Frieder.

* Took over as interim head coach in 1989 after Frieder accepted head-coaching job at Arizona State and led the Wolverines to six victories in NCAA tournament and the national title.

* In eight-plus seasons, Fisher produced a 184-82 (.692) record, including nine postseason berths and three trips to the NCAA championship game.

* One of three coaches to guide three teams to the Final Four in the first five years of a head-coaching career.

* One of six coaches to have won national championship and National Invitation Tournament title.