Pete Golding meet Steve Fisher: Ex-Michigan basketball coach took over for magical postseason run

Because of Steve Fisher, the preposterous circumstance in which Ole Miss football coach Pete Golding finds himself cannot be described as unprecedented. Indeed, it is most unusual for a college coach to be so close to winning a national championship just a few weeks after being placed in charge of a major program, having run the team for just a few games, but the precedent for this commotion was established more than 35 years ago.

Golding took over the Rebels when his former boss, Lane Kiffin, decided he’d rather work at LSU in the future than stick with the football team that lost just one game all season and was about to earn a No. 6 seed in the College Football Playoff.

Fisher was placed in command of the Michigan basketball program by athletic director Bo Schembechler on the morning of March 15, 1989, hours after he’d learned his former boss, Bill Frieder, had chosen to accept the position of Arizona State coach just days before he was to lead Glen Rice, Sean Higgins and Terry Mills into the NCAA Tournament as a No. 3 NCAA seed.

There was one massive difference in their situations, though.

“He’s writing the first chapter in the journey he knows he’s undertaking,” Fisher told AllSportsPeople. “I was auditioning to see if I could write a chapter. That was a big difference. He has the job. He’s for sure going to keep the job regardless. And I didn’t have a job, wasn’t going to keep it unless we won, won big. Which we did.”

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Golding was installed by athletic director Keith Carter as the new Ole Miss football coach – no “interim” descriptor necessary – on the same day it became official Kiffin was leaving for Baton Rouge. Golding was running the sideline for the Rebels three weeks later, when they opened the CFP with a first-round home game against Tulane.

Two victories later, Ole Miss is in the national semifinals against No. 10 seed Miami at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in Glendale, Ariz. If Golding wins this and one more in the championship game, he will own a career record of 4-0. When Mack Brown won his first national championship at Texas after the 2005 season, his record stood at 163-88-1.

Golding came to Ole Miss from Alabama, where he coached linebackers under the great Nick Saban. He was defensive coordinator for the Rebels for two seasons before taking command of the entire program. He is 41, close to the age Fisher was when asked to step in at Michigan. 

“I’ll be honest with you, when it first happened, I didn’t even give it a thought until people started calling me on it,” Fisher told SN. “There are some similarities, but there are some differences, too.”

Fisher did not have to deal with all this assistant coach foolishness at Ole Miss, which is trying to prepare for the school’s most important football game in a half-century – at least – while at times uncertain whether particular members of the staff will perform duties they had handled all season.

Ole Miss didn’t have to confront the Flyin’ Illini for a third time.

“Yes,” Fisher said when asked if he believed Michigan had the potential to win the 1989 NCAA Championship. “But I also knew that you have to be lucky to sometimes advance in games you’re supposed to win. I felt we had enough talent to play with anybody.”

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An early wake-up call

Other than Charles Harris, the Arizona State athletic director who had offered Frieder the Sun Devils head coaching job – and gave him less than a half-hour to make a decision – Fisher might have been the first person to learn Frieder was leaving the Wolverines.

“Bill informed me after practice. I had no idea. No one did,” Fisher said. “He said, ‘I’ve got news for you. I’m going to take the red-eye out to Phoenix, they’re going to announce me as the new head coach, and then you’ll take the team and I’ll meet you in Atlanta (for Michigan's first-round game). And I was dumbfounded. I thought he was pulling my leg. Everybody thought Gene Keady was going to take the job.

“As the night went on, it was reported on all the local stations. I got a call from Bo’s secretary at about 9 o’clock at night, saying, ‘Hey, Bo needs to see you in his office at 7 in the morning.’ So I knew when I heard that, they weren’t going to let Bill coach the team.

“That was the day we were leaving for Atlanta. It was the same way Bo does a lot of stuff. I liked him. He liked me a lot. His quote to me was: ‘Fisher, can you coach this team? Because Frieder’s not going to.’ That’s how he told me I was going to be the interim.”

Michigan’s first assignment was Xavier, then a member of what is now the Horizon League but soon to develop into a significant college basketball power. The frontcourt of Derek Strong and Tyrone Hill would lead the Musketeers to a Sweet 16 the following season and go on to play a combined 24 NBA seasons. They rang up 39 points against the Wolverines, and Michigan only won their first-round game by five.

They got a gift of sorts when South Alabama upset No. 6 seed Alabama, but it turned out that did not convey an easy second-round game for the Wolverines. Guard Junie Lewis scored 25 points and the Jaguars led at halftime, but Rice presented the first indication something magical was happening with his game and buried the opposition with 36 points and five assists.

Rice had enjoyed a terrific senior season, but none of the four organizations employed to establish the NCAA’s consensus All-America honors placed him on the first team. UPI had him as a third-teamer. The National Association of Basketball Coaches didn’t acknowledge him at all.

Four days later, Rice was at Rupp Arena in Lexington smashing favored North Carolina with an epic 34-point performance that included 8-of-12 shooting on 3-pointers. That was directly after Virginia had presented Michigan with another break by upsetting No. 1 seed Oklahoma with All-Americans Stacey King and Mookie Blaylock.

And, yeah, this one truly was a blessing, because UM blew out the Cavs by 37 points.

Michigan was in the Final Four, the same as Ole Miss now (but with capital letters).

“I think the pressure was self-imposed,” Fisher told TSN. “I knew I had a job. I knew, if I wanted to, I could go with Bill out to Arizona State. So I knew I would not be job-hunting.

“I had just gotten to the stage where we talked about if I wanted to be a head coach, it was time to start looking. It just so happened Illinois State, my alma mater, fired Bob Donewald. Western Michigan fired their coach. So there were two jobs I thought I would probably have a chance at. Ron Wellman, who was the AD at Illinois State, started following our team during our run through the tournament with Michigan. And he offered me the job.

“I became the storyline. The media followed us right out of the gate like it was the Final Four. That added to the stress. Bo didn’t want Bill around, but I felt a tremendous loyalty to Bill, so he and I talked every day. The normal stresses of the tournament wears on anybody, but under the circumstances we were, that added to it 10-fold.”

From close call to lucky call

When Michigan got to Seattle’s Kingdome for the Final Four, they knew they were in for a massive challenge. It was no secret because they already had played the Illinois lineup of Nick Anderson, Kenny Battle, Kendall Gill, Stephen Bardo and Lowell Hamilton in two Big Ten games, and the Wolverines lost those by a combined 28 points.

“We lost to Illinois our last regular-season game, and in my time with Bill, we had never lost our Senior Day, our last home game. And they beat us pretty good. They were the best team in the country, I thought,” Fisher said. “But I was smart enough to say, we’ve got some great players, we’re talented enough that if we got some good fortune, we could win it.”

Michigan and Illinois played a classic on the Final Four stage, but Illini big man Lowell Hamilton fouled out in the final minute, and that helped create the opening for Sean Higgins to break a tie score in the final seconds by pulling down an offensive rebound of Terry Mills’ missed shot and converting a putback.

The final against Seton Hall was even closer, carrying into overtime before guard Rumeal Robinson got free on the break and was gently bumped in the lane by Pirates guard Gerald Green. That might have been the luck Fisher had hoped to encounter, although Robinson did need to convert the free throws to claim the championship.

Michigan's 1989 run

“Of the six games we won, five of the six could have gone either way,” Fisher said. “My wife Angie took the team bus to the airport with the administrators, and of course I was with the team,” Fisher said. “She said afterward they were all, ‘Well, gotta call Bobby Knight and see who he thinks we should hire. Names that were prominently mentioned at the time were Jim Crews and Pete Gillen, and we happened to be playing Pete Gillen and Xavier in the first game of the tournament. And we were lucky to win. They led for most of the game.

“Unless you’re head and shoulders better than everyone else, and not many of them are, you’re going to have some close games. You’re going to have to get a call, you’re going to have to not get a bad call, you’re going to at least have to not get unlucky to win it.

“I knew I was going to get the job after we beat North Carolina. I knew in my heart. I told Angie. Bo didn’t say anything or tell me until well after we won the tournament. Bo was interviewed after the championship game by CBS … and the way only Bo could say it, ‘Well, I think he’s earned an interview.’

“Terry Mills, when they asked him, said, ‘Well, I’ve never heard of an undefeated coach getting fired.’ ”

A quick trip to the top

Fisher now contends he was well prepared to handle the challenges of being head coach in part because Frieder assigned him so much responsibility in practices and games. The players were accustomed to his voice.

Although he won the NCAA title in his first season and reached consecutive finals in 1992 and 1993 with the Fab Five group featuring Chris Webber, Juwan Howard and Jalen Rose, it’s possible Fisher’s best work as a college coach was done at San Diego State, which now very much is his home at age 80, where he invigorated the program and led the Aztecs to 386 victories, eight NCAA Tournaments and two Sweet 16s. He built the foundation for former assistant Brian Dutcher, who eventually coached the team to the 2023 Final Four.

Fisher contends Frieder did not want to make the decision on Arizona State in advance of March Madness and preferred to wait until the Wolverines were done playing. He was not given that choice by ASU and decided to walk away from a championship contender. The decision was so widely criticized – and ultimately counterproductive – no one in either college football or men’s basketball had made a similar move in the 35 years since.

Many football coaches left for new positions in advance of bowl games that were essentially exhibitions, but hundreds of coaches in hoops waited until their seasons were finished before making any moves.

Until Kiffin.

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Frieder became the target of the enduring Schembechler quote, “A Michigan man will coach Michigan,” which had to sting given he had multiple degrees from the university. He later told CBS Sports he did not believe Schembechler was sufficiently supporting the basketball program as AD, which led him to be more open to ASU’s approach.

“I felt bad for Bill,” Fisher said. “Obviously, I benefited more than anyone, because I became the head coach. And Michigan benefited because we won the national championship, the one and only we got. Bill had a way, he and his wife both did, they said: We made a decision, we’re immensely excited about where we’re going to go and starting the next chapter in our lives.

“In the back of my mind, I was sad for Frieder not being able to coach the team.”