Sports Roundup by Various Sports Writers

By Nick Canepa

As modern revelations go, this one likely will be bypassed in future Bible addendums: "San Diego State exercises its option on basketball coach Steve Fisher's contract through the 2012-13 season."

Pearl Harbor may have been a surprise — to everyone but the conspiracy theorists. Just say it was not Buster Douglas flattening Mike Tyson.

"This is an easy one," SDSU Athletic Director Jeff Schemmel says. "We should do this."

There have been times when brain flatulence has out-gassed the no-brainers on Montezuma Mesa, but this hardly involved an epiphany. Most people didn't even know Fisher had a two-year option. Those who did certainly couldn't have been concerned about the unthinkable happening (although, when dealing with San Diego State, one never knows).

"They told me in June they were going to do this," Fisher was saying yesterday after the announcement. To broadcast it wouldn't have been his style.

All kidding aside, this is very nice, because Fisher not only is the best thing to happen to San Diego State basketball, but San Diego basketball. Period.

The game — not only on 55th Street, but in this town — was on its way to the graveyard when Fisher intercepted the hearse in 1999. He somehow revived basketball here when there really was nothing to revive. It was given up for dead. But he was just about the only doctor who sensed a pulse.

What the man who once coached Michigan to an NCAA title did was do what everyone before him thought possible but failed to accomplish — he recruited good players, won games and created excitement, and the campus and community responded.

There was no tonsil service. He knew he could do it, set out to do it and — despite a first year in which he went 0-14 in the Mountain West Conference — did it, and with style and humility. He figured he'd still be here in 2009 and beyond.

"In spite of what others might have said or thought, I did," says Fisher, 64. "I've never looked at anything short-term. It was the perfect place for me at the time, with a young son (Mark, now one of his assistants) in the eighth grade.

"It's been better than I had hoped, in terms of relationship (with the university).

I felt it would be my last job. Until I got fired from my last job (Michigan, in 1997), I didn't have a resume. I'd always been recruited. I was optimistic I wouldn't be asked to leave."

Moreover, there's the Fisher Style. This is a coach totally in control of his program. He's a forgiving, passionate, religious man, but he is someone who does not tolerate off-the-court problems from his players, as we have seen in his disciplinary rulings, no matter the quality of the athlete.

And, unlike so many coaches we've had in our little burg, he does not finger-point. With Fisher the educator, when things go wrong, even if they aren't his fault, his finger points but one way — to his chest.

So he has done good things. Last year's team won 26 games, most in school history, and advanced to the NIT semifinals in New York. There have been four straight 20-win seasons, and the last time that happened was 1941.

But the mountain hasn't been completely scaled. Fisher's Aztecs have been good, not great, and have hovered at that level.

"We're in the stage now where we have the toughest part to climb," says Fisher, whose team's first official practice is Oct. 16, "and that is getting into the NCAAs and winning an NCAA championship. That's the challenge.

"We've won a lot of games the last few years, but we've got to win one or two more important games — like BYU at home or Utah in the conference tournament. This is what we preach, and we're not the only ones doing it, but it's realistic."

He's reached the point where he can reload now, despite losing four senior starters — Lorrenzo Wade (now playing in Greece), Kyle Spain (Belgium), Ryan Amoroso (Italy) and Matt Thomas — from last year's club.

Billy White, Tim Shelton and D.J. Gay, fine players involved plenty last year, return, as do a slew of recruits, not to mention former Pepperdine standouts Tyrone Shelley and Malcolm Thomas (both of Crawford High) and 6-foot-11, 296-pound center Brian Carlwell, a transfer from Illinois. There are 11 underclassmen on the roster.

"I like this team," Fisher says. "We have legitimately the greatest depth we've had since I've been here. We go two-deep in every spot but point guard. We have guys we believe are going to be good. I believe they will. It will be up to the coaches to see that they are."

With Steve Fisher, that's how it is. It's up to the coaches — more specifically, one coach. And he's here four more years. Get over the shock.

Nick Canepa writes about sports for The San Diego Union-Tribune.

COPYRIGHT 2009 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE.

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM