In this year's NCAA Ttournament, Michigan might have more to prove than ever before.
The once-callow Wolverines (21-7) are now led by the Fab Four -- tournament-tested veterans Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson. These players are now juniors and have led Michigan to the title game the last two seasons.
But in this year's Big Dance the Wolverines are, of course, without the services of Chris Webber, the leader of the original Fab Five who jumped ship to the NBA after last season.
Head coach Steve Fisher's greater concern is his team's downward slide at the end of this year's regular season. Michigan, seeded third in the Midwest regional, saw its momentum and chance at the Big 10 championship slip away by losing three of its final four games.
"I'm disappointed with our performance in the past four games," said Howard, a co-captain. "But that is behind us right now. We can't dwell on it -- what we've been missing is our defensive intensity, but I know we can get that back by focusing in practice and working hard."
The first focus of Michigan's attention is Pepperdine (19-10), the region's 14th seed. If the Waves have any advantages in Thursday's 8:08 game at the Kansas Coliseum in Wichita, Kan., it's in the scouting department: national exposure means that Pepperdine knows all about Michigan. The Wolverines can't quite say the same about the Waves.
"I really know little to nothing about them, at this point," Fisher said Monday. "I am sure Pepperdine will be a great representative of their conference."
Oh, by the way: The Waves were champions of the West Coast Conference, besting squads such as San Diego and regular-season champ Gonzaga in the WCC tournament. Michigan has not played in a postseason tournament, as the Big 10 settles its championship during the regular season. And Michigan has never faced Pepperdine, so it knows next to nothing about the Waves.
But the key to a Wolverine win probably doesn't lie in Wave game film analysis. Michigan has problems of its own to address.
"We're all disappointed that we're not sizing up [Big 10 championship] rings," Fisher said. "All of us thought that was going to happen two weeks ago. There is a thin veiled line between winning and losing, but I don't know if an attitudinal change is necessary.
"When you win you're happy and when you lose you are not, and because we've lost three out of four, we're not happy."
In the midst of all that gloom, Fisher has a couple of things to brighten his day: 20.6 points per game from Rose and 19.6 from Howard. Add in the tournament experience of Jackson and King, and Michigan might just have enough to calm the Waves and subsequent opponents.
"Early in the season, we won a couple of close ones that maybe we should have lost, and late in the season we lost a couple of close games that maybe we should have won," Fisher said. "So hopefully, now that our luck has evened itself out, we will now be able to go into the tournament and play exceptionally well."
NOTES: In the past five NCAA tournaments, Michigan has won 17 games, second-most in the nation behind Duke's 22 tournament victories since 1989 . . . Fisher is one of seven head coaches in the tournament who has won the championship. His lone title came in 1989 when, as an assistant, he took over the Michigan reigns from head coach Bill Frieder, who had announced his resignation to accept the head position at Arizona State. Bo Schembechler, athletic director at the time, refused to allow Frieder to coach the Wolverines in the postseason.
Rose enters the 1994 tournament as the active leader in NCAA tournament scoring. Rose has 191 points in his 12 games (15.6 average.)
Michigan is 0-1 all-time against schools from the West Coast Conference. It lost to Loyola-Marymount in the 1990 NCAA tournament. Loyola, led by Bo Kimble and dedicating its season to fallen-star Hank Gathers, advanced to the round of eight before losing to eventual national champion UNLV.
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