With only seconds left in the contest and the lead going back and forth, it would come down to one last question in the third game of the best of three, just as it had in 1993, when the Cavaliers beat the Wolverines.
Michigan trailed the University of Virginia by 25 points when the moderator began the final toss-up question, "His movies include Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew . . ."
"Bzzzz," buzzed in Michigan's Jay Rhee, a senior philosophy major from San Francisco. "Zeffirelli," he said.
Fortunately, Rhee's gamble paid off; the question had asked for the director's name. If the answer had called for an actor's name or some other fact, all would have been lost. But now Michigan was down only 15 points with 15 seconds left, and could win with a correct answer to the bonus question:
"Its two biggest deals so far in the 1990s have been the acquisition of Motel 6 and Borden's. Those multibillion-dollar deals pale in comparison with its leveraged buyouts of the 1980s, capped by the $30.6 billion deal for RJR Nabisco. For 25 points---name this takeover specialist."
As the buzzer was about to sound, Michigan gave the correct answer:
KKR---Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.
Final score: Michigan 260, Virginia 250.
"The prowess of our athletic teams gets a lot of attention in Ann Arbor and nationwide," said team president Joe Saul, a third-year law student, upon the team's return from the contest in Tempe, Arizona, just in time for final exams. "We're happy to make sure our student body gets credit for its intellectual achievements, too."
Captain David Frazee of Arkansas City, Kansas, who graduated from the Law School this spring, said the game "tests your speed at information-recall---but information is the stuff of knowledge."
Other members of the championship team are Benoy Chacko '96, a biochemistry major from Mount Clemens, Michigan; freshman Ravin Garg, a biology major from Shelby Township, Michigan; and senior Michelle LaLonde of Ann Arbor. Kevin Olmstead, adjunct assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, coached the team.
Unlike many collegiate academic games teams, the U-M squad is open to any students who wish to join. "Approximately 60 different students represented our team in competitions this year," Saul said. "We practice weekly throughout the year from 7-10 p.m. Anyone who wants to attend a practice---student or not---is welcome to come play. We can be contacted at ac.info@umich.edu."
The team receives most of its funding from the University Activities Center, but it also raises money by periodically running tournaments that bring 60 state high school teams to campus.
High school teachers like to participate in the tournaments at U-M, Saul said, "because we developed a Michigan Format that emphasizes high-quality questions and makes them as much like collegiate-level questions as possible."
Interested persons can link with the team's Michigan Academic Competitions Web page at: http://www.itd.umich.edu/~jmsaul/mac.html
. . . June 1996