Steve Fisher was the best hire in school history. He has a little wooden in him.[/quote]
I knew John Wooden. I worked with John Wooden. John Wooden was a friend of mine. And Steve Fisher is a whole lot more like John Wooden than Dan Quayle was ever like JFK. At he is looking more and more like Wooden every year.
And there are other similarities. Like Wooden, Fisher is a pretty mediocre game coach. He preps well, usually goes into games with a good plan, but if things go awry, he seems like he doesn’t have a clue how to adjust. Like Wooden, he doesn’t use his bench much, rarely more than 2 deep.
His players are in great shape. They gotta be to play > 30 minutes a game.
They’re more disciplined this year than they have ever been. In the past they’ve been all over the place.
He has rules. He applies them differently and appropriately for each kid. Wooden did the same thing.
One area where they are different is off the court. Wooden had a great sense of humor. If Fisher has that, I’ve never seen it.
What’s really different this year about the Aztecs, is that he has 5 athletes starting. Having watched Aztec basketball for more than 40 years, I can tell you without exception that has never happened before. They’ve had skill at every position , even more than they do now, (particularly the teams of the late 70’s/early 80’s may have been more skilled.) but they have never had 5 guys that could run with anyone.
Anyway, it’s exciting. Could break into the top 5 this weeek in the rankings. (Wouldn’t surprise me though if they stayed put and Nova moves up.) If they win out at home and pick up a couple more road wins and they should be looking at a 2 seed, giving them a decent path to the sweet 16. And they got the bodies, from there anything could happen. Awesome 🙂
