They reached the NCAA championship game as freshmen in 1992 and again as sophomores in 1993. Despite their talent, they never won a Big Ten Regular Season Championship or NCAA Championship. Michigan won the rematch as the Fab Five scored all but two Wolverines points. In the elite eight round of the 1992 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament, Michigan had a rematch against a Jimmy Jackson-led Ohio State Buckeyes team that had beaten them twice during the regular season by double digits. Originally, the players rebelled against the moniker and attempted to give themselves the nickname 'Five Times' (written '5X's'). But most of their wins and both of their Final Four appearances were vacated because Webber accepted financial aids from Ed Martin that compromised his amateur status.Īs students, they wore black athletic shoes, black athletic socks, and baggy basketball shorts, which were an affront to conventional college basketball attire at that time. They reached the 19 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship games as both freshmen and sophomores. They started as a unit in all but one of the season's remaining games. In that first game starting together, the five freshmen scored all the team's points against Notre Dame.

They all played when the season opened on December 2, 1991, against the University of Detroit, but did not all play at the same time until December 7, against Eastern Michigan, and did not start regularly until February 9, 1992. Four of the five members went on to play in the NBA.Īt first, only three of the freshmen started for the 1991–92 Michigan men's basketball team. Four McDonald's All-Americans in a single recruiting class stood as an unbroken record until the 2013 McDonald's All-American Boys Game included six members of the entering class for the 2013–14 Kentucky Wildcats team. įour of the five participated in the 1991 McDonald's All-American Game. They are the subjects of The Fab Five, the highest-rated ESPN Films documentary ever produced, one of the featured teams in two of the highest-rated NCAA Men's Basketball Championship games ever played in terms of households (although not viewers), and a marketing juggernaut whose merchandise sales dwarfed even those of the national champion 1988–89 Michigan Wolverines men's basketball team. Their trend-setting but controversial antics on the court garnered much media attention. The Fab Five were the first team in NCAA history to compete in the championship game with all-freshman starters. The class consisted of Detroit natives Chris Webber (#4) and Jalen Rose (#5), Chicago native Juwan Howard (#25), and two recruits from Texas: Plano's Jimmy King (#24) and Austin's Ray Jackson (#21). The Fab Five was the 1991 University of Michigan men's basketball team recruiting class that many consider one of the greatest recruiting classes of all time. From left to right, Jimmy King, Jalen Rose, Chris Webber, Ray Jackson, Juwan Howard. Men's basketball team of the University of Michigan The Fab Five during their sophomore year at Crisler Arena.

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