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There’s no denying that the Fab Five was a cultural phenomenon. Five freshmen came together and were able to go toe to toe with the best teams in college basketball - and this was in an era when Christian Laettner, Grant Hill and Bobby Hurley stayed for four years.
There was always bad blood between those two groups though. Duke recruited Chris Webber hard before he decided to stay home with his buddy Jalen Rose, who confessed later that he was jealous of Duke’s success and not least of all of Grant Hill, because Hill had everything he wanted - a famous father and both parents to look after him.
Rose’s father, Jimmy Walker, was also a famous athlete, but he barely knew his son and didn’t really have much to do with him when he was growing up.
In short, the teams were polar opposites and when Duke visited Michigan in December of 1991, the Wolverines were ready for the defending national champions.
Or thought they were.
Michigan really came after Duke hard and the Blue Devils had to work hard to get the game into overtime.
In OT, experience came through and though Duke only scored one basket in overtime, the Blue Devils’ experience allowed them to do things that Michigan could not.
Duke won 88-85 and in the championship rematch in April won by 20.
And the following fall, when Michigan came to Cameron woofing about the championship Duke “stole” from them, Duke beat them again, 79-68 and as far as we can tell, none of them ever got over it.