1988-89

NCAA Results

First Round
#1 Illinois 77, #16 McNeese State 71
#9 Ball State 68, #8 Pittsburgh 64
#5 Arkansas 120, #12 Loyola Marymount 101
#4 Louisville 76, #13 Arkansas-Little Rock 71
#11 Texas 76, #6 Georgia Tech 70
#3 Missouri 85, #14 Creighton 69
#10 Colorado State 68, #7 Florida 46
#2 Syracuse 104, #15 Bucknell 81
#1 Oklahoma 72, #16 East Tennessee State 71
#9 Louisiana Tech 83, #8 La Salle 74
#5 Virginia 100, #12 Providence 97
#13 Middle Tennessee State 97, #4 Florida State 83
#11 South Alabama 86, #6 Alabama 84
#3 Michigan 92, #14 Xavier 87
#7 UCLA 84, #10 Iowa State 74
#2 North Carolina 93, #15 Southern (La.) 79
#1 Georgetown 50, #16 Princeton 49
#9 Notre Dame 81, #8 Vanderbilt 65
#5 North Carolina State 81, #12 South Carolina 66
#4 Iowa 87, #13 Rutgers 73
#11 Minnesota 86, #6 Kansas State 75
#14 Siena 80, #3 Stanford 78
#7 West Virginia 84, #10 Tennessee 68
#2 Duke 90, #15 South Carolina State 69
#1 Arizona 94, #16 Robert Morris (Pa.) 60
#9 Clemson 83, #8 St. Mary's 70
#12 DePaul 66, #5 Memphis State 63
#4 UNLV 68, #13 Idaho 56
#11 Evansville 94, #6 Oregon State 90 (OT)
#3 Seton Hall 60, #14 Southwest Missouri State 51
#7 Texas-El Paso 85, #10 Louisiana State 74
#2 Indiana 99, #15 George Mason 85
Second Round
Illinois 72, Ball State 60
Louisville 93, Arkansas 84
Missouri 108, Texas 89
Syracuse 65, Colorado State 50
Oklahoma 124, Louisiana Tech 81
Virginia 104, Middle Tennessee State 88
Michigan 91, South Alabama 82
North Carolina 88, UCLA 81
Georgetown 81, Notre Dame 74
North Carolina State 102, Iowa 96 (2OT)
Minnesota 80, Siena 67
Duke 70, West Virginia 63
Arizona 94, Clemson 68
UNLV 85, DePaul 70
Seton Hall 87, Evansville 73
Indiana 92, Texas-El Paso 69
Regional Semifinals
Illinois 83, Louisville 69
Syracuse 83, Missouri 80
Virginia 86, Oklahoma 80
Michigan 92, North Carolina 87
Georgetown 69, North Carolina State 61
Duke 87, Minnesota 70
UNLV 68, Arizona 67
Seton Hall 78, Indiana 65
Regional Finals
Midwest: Illinois 89, Syracuse 86
Southeast: Michigan 102, Virginia 65
East: Duke 85, Georgetown 77
West: Seton Hall 84, UNLV 61
National Semifinals
Seton Hall 95, Duke 78
Michigan 83, Illinois 81
Championship Game
Michigan 80, Seton Hall 79 (OT)

Michigan leaders: Glen Rice, Sr., F; Rumeal Robinson, Jr., G; Loy Vaught, Jr., F; Terry Mills, Jr., C; Sean Higgins, So., F-G

All-NCAA Tournament Team

Top 10

All-America Team

Leaders
Team
Offense: Loyola (Marymount), 112.5
Defense: Princeton, 53.0

Individual Scoring

Rebounding

Notes

• St. John’s (20-13) def. St. Louis (27-10) for the NIT title.

• Loyola (Marymount) def. U.S. International 181-150 on Jan. 31, 1989, the highest scoring game in NCAA history.

• Evansville’s Scott Haffner scored a national-high 65 vs. Dayton.

• Coaches retiring: Ralph Miller of Oregon State (657-382); C.M. Newton of Vanderbilt (509-375); and Norm Sloan of North Carolina State (624-393).

The decade came to a fitting climax on April 3, when the NCAA title game between Michigan and Seton Hall went into overtime for the first time in 26 years.

Rumeal Robinson's two free throws with three seconds left in OT won the game and the title (their first) for the Wolverines, who were playing under an interim coach with no tournament experience.

The final score of 80–79 marked the third time in the decade that the championship game was decided by one point. The average margin of victory in title games through the 1980s was four points.

Final AP Top 20

Writers' poll taken before tournament.

Note: Michigan won the NCAAs.

Consensus All-America

(In alphabetical order)

First Team

·         Sean Elliott, Arizona

·         Pervis Ellison, Louisville

·         Danny Ferry, Duke

·         Chris Jackson, LSU

·         Stacey King, Oklahoma

Second Team

·         Mookie Blaylock, Oklahoma

·         Sherman Douglas, Syracuse

·         Jay Edwards, Indiana

·         Todd Lichti, Stanford

·         Glen Rice, Michigan

AP POLL

1. Arizona
2. Georgetown
3. Illinois
4. Oklahoma
5. North Carolina
6. Missouri
7. Syracuse
8. Indiana
9. Duke
10. Michigan

UPI COACHES POLL

1. Arizona
2. Georgetown
3. Illinois
4. North Carolina
5. Oklahoma
6. Indiana
7. Duke
8. Missouri
9. Syracuse
10. Michigan

HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES

1989
*William "Pop" Gates, Player
K. C. Jones, Player
Leonard (Lenny) Wilkens, Player (Enshined as a Coach in 1998)

Michigan works overtime

After Michigan had squeezed out an electrifying 80-79 overtime triumph over Seton Hall for the NCAA basketball championship April 3, interim coach Steve Fisher stood by himself on the sideline as his players celebrated at midcourt.

Fisher soon was walking around holding his two young boys in his arms, a fitting picture for this quiet family man who heretofore had spent his college basketball years as a silent, behind-the-scenes assistant.

As much as he wants to tell everyone he had very little to do with Michigan's shocking rise to the national title, don't believe him. He gave the Wolverines much-needed direction and firmness, and his nearly daily conferences with his best players gave them a clear sense of their responsibilities in each game.

As a result, they are now celebrating an NCAA crown that a month ago even they couldn't possibly have thought they would win.

Until the eve of this tournament, this was Bill Frieder's team. A brilliant recruiter, Frieder had assembled the kind of talent in Ann Arbor that most coaches could only dream of signing. His latest squad had everything: Enormous size, depth, quickness and so many good shooters the Wolverines led the nation in field-goal accuracy.

But despite seven consecutive 20-victory seasons, Frieder never could get the Wolverines to a regional final, much less the Final Four. Then, after the end of this regular season, he signed a lucrative contract with Arizona State and Michigan athletic director Bo Schembechler decided he wanted a "Michigan man" to direct the team, and that definitely wasn't Frieder. So Fisher, a seven-year assistant and a self-described loyal Michigan man, took over.

This was such an unlikely pairing, an interim coach who never had guided a college team before and a bunch of former high school All-Americans who had spent their time at Michigan failing to live up to lofty expectations.

This was a team that couldn't finish better than third in the Big Ten Conference this season, a team that was blown out by 16 points at home by Illinois in its regular-season finale, the game that ended Frieder's career at the school. But Fisher's gentle touch turned all those disappointments into one night of wonderful triumph for the Wolverines.

Michigan needed everything Fisher could give them in the Kingdome because Seton Hall was just as good and just as gutty. The Pirates, who rode to the title game on the strength of gritty defense and scoring balance, rallied from a 12-point deficit in the second half and sent the game into overtime on John Morton's 3-pointer with 24 seconds left.

Only two foul shots by Michigan's Rumeal Robinson with three seconds remaining in overtime prevented Seton Hall from winning the championship.

Instead, it was the Wolverines to cherish.

Perhaps Fisher's best move before the championship game was when he talked to forward Glen Rice and told him he had to play harder, that he was virtually placing the team's future on his talented shoulders. From then on, Fisher would say Rice was his first option in every game, on every possession.

Rice already was what he called a "man on a mission." Following a last-second loss to Indiana that virtually eliminated Michigan from the Big Ten race, Rice told his teammates that everyone "was going on a mission."

Said Wolverines center Loy Vaught after the Seton Hall game: "For as long as I can remember, we've decided to go on this mission, and now the mission has been accomplished."

Rice simply was sensational throughout the tournament.

"Once I get on a roll, I feel like I can't miss," said the 6-7 senior, who went on a 2 1/2-week roll.

Rice finished with 184 points in six games, breaking Bill Bradley's NCAA record (177 in five games for Princeton in 1965). Rice also became the Big Ten's all-time leading scorer with 2,442 points, eclipsing the league mark (2,439) set by former Michigan player Mike McGee.

Rice had 31 points against Seton Hall, including a couple of NBA-distance 3-pointers that almost won the game in regulation. He was an easy choice as the tournament's most outstanding player.

"He loaded all of us up and took us to the Promised Land," Fisher said. No one could argue with that assessment.

Yet Fisher also needed a large assist on the final night from Robinson, perhaps the closest of all the Wolverines to Frieder. Robinson, who had been recruited out of Boston, had been a Proposition 48 victim his freshman year.

But with Frieder's help, he said he benefited from his season of ineligibility, maturing into a strong, determined playmaker and turning from a shy youth into an outgoing man.

Robinson's 14 first-half points carried Michigan to a 37-32 lead at intermission and then, at the end of overtime, his willingness to want to be the guy who could win the game resulted in the Wolverines' ultimate triumph.

This was the setting in those hectic final seconds: With seven seconds left, Seton Hall's Morton twisted down the lane against Rice and tossed up an airball from 6 feet.

Fisher already had told Robinson not to call a timeout, no matter what happened on the Pirates' possession. So Robinson dribbled the length of the court and penetrated down the middle. With three seconds to go, veteran referee John Clougherty called a blocking fouled on Seton Hall guard Gerald Greene.

"I didn't want to put the burden on anyone else's shoulders," Robinson said. "I've been hiding on last-second shots. I decided if anyone took it, I wanted to be the one. I was either going to shoot or get fouled."

Greene thought he had good enough position to draw a charge. But Clougherty saw it differently and Robinson, a 64 percent foul shooter, swished both ends of a one-and-one to give Michigan an 80-79 lead.

"It is a childhood dream to do something like this," said Robinson, who was born in Jamaica and came to the United States when he was six. "It was a little cockiness but mostly confidence. I don't know whether to cry or not.

"You cherish the good time, but where I have come from, you remember the hard times."

It was Robinson's shocking reverse, over-his-head dunk with 14:17 left in the game that gave Michigan a 51-39 lead and all but seemed to put things out of Seton Hall's reach.

But the Pirates' second-half defense -- which had blanketed the likes of Indiana, Duke and Nevada-Las Vegas during the tournament -- came alive, forcing Michigan into some wild outside shots and creating enough turnovers to ignite a comeback.

With the Wolverines ahead, 59-49, Morton, a tough city kid out of New York, took over Seton Hall. He scored eight of his team's next 12 points to close the gap to 61-59. Rice answered with a 23-footer for three points, and again Michigan seemed OK.

But Morton, now working against Rice, answered with two baskets off turnovers and a slicing off-balance field goal for a 67-66 Seton Hall lead with 2:13 to go. Moments later, after a Seton Hall field goal, Rice tossed in another 3-pointer for a 69-68 edge.

"This was the first shootout I've ever been in," said Morton, who finished with 35 points, including 25 after the half.

After two free throws by Michigan sophomore Sean Higgins, Morton swished a lofting 3-pointer in front of Rice to tie things at 71 with 24 seconds remaining. Fisher called a timeout with 17 seconds to go, just to remind his players he wanted Rice to take the next shot off a play called "Screen Glen."

Rice launched a fine-looking jumper form the top of the key that he thought was going in. But it bounded out, and the NCAA had its first overtime final since 1963.

Yet another Morton 3-pointer with 2:41 left in overtime gave Seton Hall a 79-76 lead. In the next moments, the Pirates had two chances to increase the margin but Morton missed a layup and Greene failed on the front end of a one-and-one.

After Michigan center Terry Mills answered with a jump shot, Seton Hall again isolated Morton at the top of the key against Rice. Morton spun down the middle as time was running out on the shot clock, but his 6-footer didn't reach the rim. That set up Robinson's game-winning free throws, the last of his 21 points.

The Pirates must wonder what would have happened if Morton had been able to make one more shot or if Australian Andrew Gaze had not gone down under, suffering through a 1-for-5, five-point performance.

But Gaze did have an excuse. He was one of four players who tried to stop Rice and he said his defensive labors took a toll on him at the offensive end.

While Seton Hall attempted to absorb the loss, Michigan celebrated. Fisher joked that he might retire as an undefeated (6-0) head coach. But, of course, he thought he had earned the Michigan job on a permanent basis. That decision was left up to Schembechler, who refused to make any announcement, saying only that he would have to interview Fisher in Ann Arbor.

"He's a great man, and 6-0 speaks for itself," said Vaught. "I can't see him not getting the job."

Besides, Fisher is the one man on the Michigan campus who can give Schembechler, who doubles as the Wolverines' football coach, tips on how to win a national title.