When Fisher became coach, part of his blueprint for rebuilding the program was resisting the financial temptation of “body bag” games, where you get a five- or six-figure check to play in another team’s home arena in exchange for an almost certain loss. It is a rare one-off nonconference road date with no return home game for SDSU, which hasn’t played at a Big Ten school in 25 years (an overtime win at Northwestern in 1996). “It just seemed like the perfect opponent - how they’re ranked, how good they’re going to be - for this year’s team,” Dutcher said. Eight times in the last 12 years, they’ve reached the NCAA Tournament (and that doesn’t count the 30-2 team in 2019-20, when there was no tournament).įisher has been back to Crisler Center once, for the 30-year reunion of the 1989 championship team after years of cajoling by then-head coach John Beilein. Three times in the last 11 years, the Aztecs have won 30 games and been ranked in the top 10. They have been in San Diego ever since, taking what at the time was one of Division I’s most moribund teams and transforming it into one of the West Coast’s premier programs. The ensuing sanctions included wins being vacated and the Final Four banners being removed from the Crisler Center rafters.īoth were out of college basketball for a season before SDSU hired Fisher in 1999 and Fisher tabbed Dutcher as his lead assistant. It figures to be a bittersweet return for Dutcher and former SDSU head coach Steve Fisher, who led Michigan to a national title in 1989 and twice more to the championship game with the Fab Five in the early 1990s - only for Fisher to be fired shortly before the 1997-98 season amid a booster scandal and Dutcher to leave a year later. When you get a chance to play one of those teams, you have to do it.” We know how hard it is to get Power 5s on our schedule. “Yeah, it’s exciting to get back to Ann Arbor and play a game, but that wasn’t the main reason for doing it. We were done with our schedule, but that time and date worked for us. But we heard there was a chance Michigan would have a game canceled on Dec. “Usually, we don’t travel that many time zones (in the nonconference) and it never works out. “Juwan and I have always talked about if the opportunity ever presented itself, I’d be interested in playing,” Dutcher said. But so did the Aztecs’ continued ascension in the college basketball world, a sign of respect that the Big Ten power would replace Kentucky with a Mountain West foe in a marquee game expected to be televised by CBS (and that CBS would sign off on it). Their deep connection - Dutcher recruited Howard out of Chicago in 1991, once watching him practice 28 straight days - certainly played a role in the match making.
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