Adams: Familiar face leads San Diego State

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - You might be wondering if the San Diego State coach is the same guy you remember.

It could be another Steve Fisher. The name is common enough.

Or it could be a Steve Fisher Jr. Enough time has elapsed for a son to follow in his father's tournament footsteps.

Twenty NCAA tournaments have been played since Steve Fisher was flung into March Madness as a head coach. He emerged three weeks later with a national championship and a fulltime head-coaching job.

He's now part of Final Four basketball lore - the interim coach turned champion, forever linked to the best and worst of Michigan basketball.

Fisher was fired as Michigan's head coach before the 1997-98 season in the midst of a recruiting scandal. But long after the "Fab Five" became the "Financed Five" - and a long way from the elite circles of college basketball - Fisher has succeeded again.

Yep, it's the same guy.

He will be 65 next Wednesday and has won more games at San Diego State than he did at the University of Michigan. The victories are smaller, of course, and well off the NCAA tournament path that took him to prominence with the exhilarating speed of a magic carpet ride.

A different vantage point hasn't changed the tournament's allure.

"If you don't get excited when you walk out there for the NCAA tournament, you don't belong in the business," said Fisher, whose team will play Tennessee in the first round of the tournament tonight at the Dunkin' Donuts Center. "I'm itching - jumping out of my skin - to get another opportunity."

He already has taken advantage of another coaching opportunity.

The Aztecs, who had 13 losing seasons in 14 years before Fisher, have won 20 or more games for five consecutive seasons.

But in March, you don't remember Fisher for rebuilding. You remember him for relieving.

Near the end of the 1988-89 regular season, Michigan coach Bill Frieder accepted the head-coaching job at Arizona State. Athletic director Bo Schembechler immediately replaced him with Fisher, Frieder's assistant, for the tournament.

Amidst all the turmoil and uncertainty, Fisher became a calming influence on a talented and suddenly inspired team that - thanks largely to Glen Rice's torrid shooting - never cooled off in a six-game fast break to the national championship.

Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl remembers it well. He was an Iowa assistant coach at the time and had developed a friendship with Fisher on the recruiting trail.

"He was a guy that had been around a little longer, so I looked up to him," Pearl said. "He was a really good guy, so you were happy that he got the opportunity (to become a head coach).

"I didn't know what kind of coach he was. You found out in a hurry."

Following the championship, Fisher became Michigan's fulltime head coach and later assembled the fabulous freshman class, including Chris Webber and Jalen Rose, that fueled two more Final Four runs. The same class became the focal point of an NCAA investigation that put Michigan on probation and cost Fisher his job.

He no longer has teams of that caliber. He doesn't have NCAA investigators at his doorstep, either.

Fisher still has an eye for talent, though. Kawhi Leonard, a 6-foot-7 freshman who leads the Mountain West Conference in rebounding, is proof of that.

The Aztecs began recruiting Leonard long before he became California's Mr. Basketball. Pac-10 schools never caught up.

Leonard is only one reason why Fisher's next Aztecs team could be his best. San Diego State will return its top five scorers and four starters.

But March Madness is no time for looking ahead. It's a time when the unexpected and the improbable are just a last-second shot away; a time when one win can lead to another, and one weekend to the next.

Or, as Pearl put it Wednesday, "It doesn't take many wins for this to become incredibly special."

Fisher knows all about that.

John Adams may be reached at 865-342-6284 or adamsj@knoxnews.com.