Category Archives: Michigan State University

A Green-Letter Weekend: Spartan Pride and Sadness

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Life sometimes comes at us fast and furiously. I will long remember this weekend for some of the highest highs I’ve experienced in a while, tempered by low lows that made my heart ache.

Late Saturday night, I returned home from a cocktail fundraiser to assist families dealing with childhood cancer — staged in part by friends who I know through my Michigan State alumni activities — when I received official notification of one of the fondest honors that has ever been bestowed upon me. I have been chosen to serve a two-year term on the national Michigan State University Alumni Association’s 35-member international advisory board.

Though I’d actually been tipped off a few days earlier about this election, the email notice pleased me immensely. That is because I learned that the roster of new and returning members includes several people who already are personal friends, some classmates who I have known for almost four decades, others younger people (born well after I graduated from State in 1977) who I have gotten to known through club activities in Chicago and my old hometown of Washington, D.C. And there are others who have become “virtual” friends through my vigorous engagement in social media.

Just by coincidence, I had earlier on Saturday received the honor of being elected to a two-year term on the board of the MSU Alumni Association of Metro Chicago, aka Chicago Spartans, to which I was appointed to fill a vacancy not long after we arrived in this amazing city. The fact that I will be able to serve my alma mater both locally and nationally — and that this was confirmed on the same day — is something of which I am tremendously proud.

I may have taxed the patience of some of my friends with how I’ve gone on about my devotion to Michigan State, but I think I now have sufficient evidence that it is as deep as I have previously suggested, and that it’s not just about the success of our football and basketball teams. MSU welcomed me when I was still 17 years old, it provided my first home away from my home in a New York City suburb, allowed me to talk about sports and other matters on radio for four years, and helped me develop the confidence that led to a fair amount of achievement as a political journalist during my D.C. days. All that, and the bonus of friendships that have lasted almost a lifetime.

I have always tried to help out what we’ve come to know as Spartan Nation in whatever ways I could, but this is the most tangible opportunity I’ve had to give something back. My term begins July 1, and I can’t wait to get started.

On top of this, I finished my fourth round of guitar classes Sunday at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Each eight-week term ends with a revue in which each class gets on stage in the main theater and performs a piece of music. And so I, along with teacher Carlos Chacon and my two classmates, performed “Summer Breeze,” a sweet tune from the 1970s group Seals and Crofts. While I don’t think a recording contract is in the immediate future, we played and sang and people in the audience — including my wife Barb — applauded. Not bad for an old guy.

I appreciate how blessed I am to have so many positive things going on in my life, because  like anyone else, there’s bad stuff too, and sometimes it’s right around the corner.

On Friday, I was at a luncheon downtown when I checked my iPhone and saw some cryptic messages on Facebook urging prayers for Rachel Kahan, with whom I’d served briefly on the board of the MSU alumni club of Washington, D.C. I knew that Rachel had been bravely fighting cancer for the past year, but the last I’d heard was that it was in remission, so I was stunned to learn that her situation had taken a turn for the worse… so dire, in fact, that by the time I arrived home, I learned that she had passed away.

Rachel was 26 years old. Life can be beautiful, but it can be cruel and unfair, too. It still is hard for me to comprehend this.

Then, today, I learned that a friend, the wife of a close friend of many, many years, is dealing with the recurrence of a cancer that she has fought off before. In this case, there is much reason for hope: a small tumor, caught early, she is getting the best in medical care, and she will, without exaggeration, have the well wishes of thousands of people. Still, it is another hardship for someone who deserves so much better.

As a cancer survivor myself, I learned a long time ago to appreciate the good things and endure the bad things that occur regularly and often quite randomly. It is helpful knowledge to have on a weekend that delivered such extremes of happiness and sadness.

 

A Scholarship Lunch At Michigan State: Minding What Matters Most

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A couple of weeks back, after my college’s men’s basketball team lost to Louisville in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament, I commented that I don’t love Michigan State University because I love its sports; I love Michigan State sports because I love Michigan State University.

One of the most fortunate aspects of my move to Chicago last summer is that the much greater proximity to East Lansing — it’s about a four-hour drive from Chicago — will enable me to turn put those words to action more often. And last Friday, I availed myself of the opportunity to represent the Chicago MSU alumni club at an on-campus luncheon to salute the donors and student-recipients of endowed scholarships.

The highlights of the event were speeches by three women chosen to represent the scholarship program: two undergraduates, and a scholarship sponsor who graduated in 1953, when women were still a distinct minority at almost every co-educational institution. I’m sure that the university had its choice of participants with great stories to tell, but it would have been hard to top those that these women presented.

Ilycia Shaw, a senior majoring in hospitality business, was the first of the speakers. Shaw described herself as coming from a “broken home” in Detroit, with a single mother who raised her and her three sisters. She said she cried when she first left her family to go to college, and now is sad about her pending departure from a university community that embraced her and gave her opportunities that she could not have anticipated or taken for granted growing up.

Julia Ruggirello, a sophomore special education major from Warren, Mich., spoke next, describing with optimism the incredible challenges that she faces. She is dealing with cystic fibrosis, a disease that attacks the lungs and requires frequent medical care. While acknowledging the reality that cystic fibrosis patients have an average life expectancy of 37 years, Ruggirello, with astounding cheerfulness, proclaimed that she was not going to allow her illness to define her or prevent her from chasing her dreams.

Donna MacInnes, the final speaker, provided a valuable lesson to students of the “post-feminist” generation that they enjoy opportunities that were not available to women in the pre-feminist days not so very long ago. MacInnes, who matriculated in 1949 when the school was still known as Michigan State College, wanted to follow her father’s footsteps into business, but was told by administrators at the time that the only acceptable major for her was home economics.

MacInnes said, though, that she was fortunate to have a faculty advisor who was forward-looking and helped her craft a curriculum of business, history, science and other courses to supplement her home ec major. She went on to combine what she learned to build a career teaching cooking classes at home and writing food articles for her local newspaper while raising her children. She was successful enough to endow a scholarship program in the name of her late parents.

The luncheon took place at the Kellogg Center, the university’s conference-hotel-restaurant complex. It is located a block from the Jack Breslin Center, the arena where the MSU men’s basketball program has thrilled Spartan fans during the 17-years-and-counting tenure of head coach Tom Izzo. It is a few blocks from Spartan Stadium, where coach Mark Dantonio has, since arriving five years ago, led MSU to football glories unseen in East Lansing in decades.

Yet the plain fact is that the victories described by a trio of women to an audience of a couple of hundred luncheon attendees in a Kellogg Center ballroom are really the ones that matter most.

 

A Bad Michigan State Game, A Great MSU Season: A Proud Spartan Says Thanks

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And then that happened. The score of Michigan State University’s game in Thursday’s NCAA “Sweet Sixteen” (regional semifinal) basketball contest speaks for itself: Louisville 57, MSU 44.

The statistics also speak for themselves. The Spartans shot just 29 percent from the field, a figure that made Louisville’s own subpar 38 percent shooting look mighty by comparison. MSU, one of the best rebounding teams in the nation this year, was beaten off the boards by 34-32. And Michigan State had 15 turnovers — several of which were converted into easy baskets by Louisville — to their opponents’ nine. Draymond Green, the senior forward, team captain and inspirational leader, had 13 points and 16 rebounds, yet no one could say it was even close to his best performance in green and white.

So we Spartisans could have ourselves a big old pity party, bemoaning how a team that overcame low pre-season expectations to win the Big 10 championship and earned a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament could end the year on such a sour note.

But we won’t.

Because when you strip away the hopes and expectations that the team had built with its amazing run, it is easy to grab onto the perspective that this, from Day 1, has been a Cinderella season for Michigan State and its fans.

The Spartans entered their 2011-12 campaign coming off one of the most difficult seasons of head coach Tom Izzo’s tenure, which has now produced one national championship, five other visits to the Final Four, 15 consecutive appearances in the NCAA tournament and games in the Sweet Sixteen in 10 of those 15 years, including this one.

Last year’s Michigan State team, which arguably had more individual talent than this year’s, nonetheless went just 19-15, finished 9-9 for a tie for fourth in the Big 10, got knocked out of the Big 10 tournament by upstart Penn State, and was one-game-and-out in the NCAA tourney with a first-round loss to mediocre UCLA. That downturn was largely attributed to poor team chemistry among the players.

From that team, MSU lost star starters Kalin Lucas and Durrell Summers to graduation, sixth man Korie Lucious to a transfer that resulted from discipline problems, and senior Delvon Roe, who simply could no longer play on his injury-damaged knees. The Spartans entered this season with Green as the only player with substantial Michigan State experience in the starting lineup.

MSU started their schedule unranked in the national Top 25, and would remain so until the sixth week. Izzo, who throughout his career has tested his players with a difficult out-of-conference schedule, topped himself by committing his team to an opening game against top-ranked North Carolina — played on the deck of an aircraft carrier docked in San Diego — and then a game against highly ranked Duke across the country at New York’s Madison Square Garden just four days later. The Spartans lost both to start out the season 0-2.

But then things gelled. Green’s court talent and fired-up leadership; the emergence of junior Derrick Nix and sophomore Adriean Payne as a strong platoon at center; the rapid improvement of forward Brenden Dawson, a touted freshman recruit and full-year starter until a knee injury in the Spartans’ last regular season game knocked him out of post-season play; solid backcourt play from sophomore point guard Kevin Appling, with contributions from senior transfer Brandon Wood and freshman Travis Trice; and the steady play of senior swing man Austin Thornton, a former walk-on.

All this added up to a 15-game winning streak after those initial two losses, and ultimately a tie with overwhelming pre-season conference favorite Ohio State and Michigan for the regular season Big 10 title, a run through Iowa, Wisconsin and Ohio State for the Big 10 tournament championship, and two wins in the NCAAs before they finally hit a wall that they couldn’t run through.

So we will smile with pride when we walk into the Breslin Center arena and see that Big 10 championship banner and the inevitable retired jersey number 23 worn by Draymond Green. We thank Green, Thornton, Wood and departing senior reserve Anthony Ianni for their contributions. We thank the players who will be returning next year with their desire to succeed tempered more strongly by Thursday’s disappointment.

But there is a greater truth that I should make clear, because I spend so much time on my blog writing about the games that Michigan State athletes play.

I do not love Michigan State University because I love Michigan State sports.

I love Michigan State sports because I love Michigan State University.

I have been attached to MSU for more than 38 years, when I enrolled there in my first time living away from my home in New York. I wasn’t there a week when I was hired to work on the campus radio station and spent four years pursuing my goal of becoming a sportscaster. I have watched with pride as the good public university that I attended became an excellent public university, a place where scientists cure cancer and split atoms, where business executives are taught and leaders in dozens of different fields are shaped. I made friendships that have withstood the passage of almost four decades, am deeply engrossed in alumni affairs as a member of the Chicago Spartans board, and when I walk on campus Friday next week to attend a luncheon honoring scholarship recipients, I will feel as at home as my 17-year-old self did in 1973.

It is also the place where I learned to try and if it didn’t work out, to try and try and try again. That’s why so many of us have taken so strongly to the school’s current marketing slogan: Spartans Will. Because even if we did not this time, we will.

We’ll Take Our Chances With Izzoball, Thank You

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The Tuesday edition of the New York Times included a column by writer Pete Thamel that came to the not-illogical conclusion that University of Kentucky rates the favorite of 16 teams remaining in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. After all, Kentucky, a team stacked with players considered to be strong NBA pro prospects, has lost only two of its 36 games this season and was dominant in its two tournament games so far.

But the column contained one line that stopped me in my tracks. Citing the fact that freshman — first-year — players Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist are predicted to go number 1 and number 2 in the upcoming NBA draft, and that as many as three other Kentucky underclassmen may also go high, Thamel said, “Years from now people will look back in wonderment that a single college team included such talent.”

Wonderment? The only thing I’m wondering is what planet you have to be on to know exactly why Kentucky is getting all that professional caliber talent. And it has nothing to with breaking any rules. What Kentucky has accomplished — unfortunately, from my perspective — is not only totally within the rules, but is encouraged by them.

The rule that has contributed most to giving Kentucky’s program its reputation as “One and Done U.” — a place where top talents congregate because they don’t expect to stay in college for long enough for their cup of coffee to get cold — is an age limit instituted six years ago by the NBA. The rule prevents players from going directly from high school to the pros by requiring that they be at least 19 years ago and at least one year out of high school.

The rule works for the NBA teams because it enables them to use the college game as a proving ground to show that talented, ticketed-for-stardom kids are really going to live up to the hype. Although some of the greatest players in NBA history, such as Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett, went pro straight from high school, there were more than a few cases in which teams got burned by expending high draft picks and a lot of money on players who turned out to be unready for the pros.

The rule works for the NCAA, the broadcast networks that carry games and anyone else who has a serious financial interest in the huge industry that college ball has become. These highly rated kids may have no intention of staying more than a year or two, but that is a year or two in which the college basketball establishment can make a buck off their talents.

But the rule also requires young men — some of whom would willingly gamble on their belief that they are talented enough to make millions immediately in the NBA — to go through what is essentially a charade that they are enrolling in a college with the intention of staying long enough to get a diploma, or even establish a connection with the college community beyond whatever athletic glory they can deliver during their short visit. It turns colleges into way stations, places where NBA-caliber talents have to incubate their careers for the one year necessary to meet the pro league’s requirement.

The reason that I was taken aback by the Times reporter’s wonderment is that no team  has been as aggressive or prolific as Kentucky at taking full advantage of this rule. Kentucky has pretty much hung out a banner welcoming one-and-done players since head coach John Calipari arrived in 2009 from a gig at University of Memphis (where he coached current Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose for his one great season in college).

In his first year, Calipari brought in a tremendous recruiting class. Even though his team got knocked out in the regional finals (known as the “Elite Eight”), five of his players — including all four star freshmen — left for the NBA. Last year’s team was powered to an appearance in the Final Four by guard Brandon Knight, who also went pro after one year.

It looks like Kentucky could again lose a whole starting team’s worth of underclassmen to the NBA, but no worries… Kentucky’s incoming freshmen class is rated number 2 in the nation by ESPN.com, just behind Arizona, a school whose program is looking to rebound after a few off years.

And it may not even be done yet. Nerlens Noel, a 6-11 center who is regarded as the best high-school senior player in the country, has narrowed his college choices to Kentucky, Georgetown and Syracuse. And in a revealing comment to ESPN.com describing his recent official visit to campus, Noel said, “Kentucky, when I was there they showed me how good of a job they do with their players and that maybe in 1-2 years in college I could be a professional.”

This situation has created something of a ritual during NCAA tournament time. Calipari is questioned by the national media about whether his program is less college sports and more NBA Developmental League; Calipari responds that he dislikes the rule as much as anybody and rolls out a list of reforms the NCAA can institute to provide incentives for players to stay in school for longer than a year, including paying players a financial stipend.

Meanwhile, the broadcast announcers generally take a see-no-evil approach and focus on the players’ marvelous talent (“Look at Kentucky’s latest crop of diaper dandies, bay-bee!”).

Sports may be the only thing more rife with situational ethics than politics, so Kentucky fans defend their school’s perpetual motion recruiting machine with the same fervor that they’d be denouncing it if Calipari’s next career stop had been at, say, archrival Louisville rather than in Lexington.

And those of us who root for teams that follow the traditional model of trying to build championship teams with players nurtured over four years — like Michigan State under head coach Tom Izzo — hold onto hope that the senior leadership of a player such as Draymond Green can overcome the superior but less experienced talent of what appears the equivalent of an NBA all-rookie team.

We Spartans are very proud of the fact that Izzo’s teams have won a national championship and gone to five other Final Fours in his 17 years as head coach, and prouder still that the program’s academic progress and graduation rates have improved greatly during that time. Some of the greatest names in recent MSU basketball history — Mateen Cleaves, Morris Peterson, Drew Neitzel, Kalin Lucas, Durrell Summers and Draymond Green — were four-year players.

We wouldn’t want it any other way.

MSU Recruits Costello, Valentine Run 1-2 For Mr. Michigan Basketball

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The award given annually to the best high school boys’ basketball player in Michigan is known as “Mr. Michigan Basketball.” But maybe it’s time for them to rename it “Mr. Michigan State Basketball,” given Spartan head coach Tom Izzo’s knack for recruiting the state’s best of the best.

It would be satisfying enough for MSU fans to know that 6-10 center Matt Costello of Bay City, whose huge scoring and rebounding stats earned him the MVP trophy, will be wearing green and white in East Lansing next year. But the close runner-up is also a Michigan State recruit: guard Denzel Valentine, whose passing skills have reminded some observers of Magic Johnson. Valentine plays for a Lansing Sexton High School team — coached by his father, former MSU basketball team captain Carlton Valentine — that has just blown the doors off most of its opponents during his senior season.

MSU Big: Matt Costello, seen here with his new Mr. Michigan Basketball trophy, averaged 25 points and 18 rebounds per game in his senior year at Bay City Western (Photo credit: Robin Buckson / Detroit News)

And now here’s the kicker. Neither of these home-state stars is regarded by scouts as the premier player in Izzo’s 2012 recruiting class. That would be Gary Harris, rated the top player in Indiana and the top high-school senior shooting guard in the nation by some scouting services.

Kenny Kaminski, another highly rated power forward who missed his senior year of basketball because of a leg injury incurred playing football, rounds out a recruiting class that ESPN.com rates sixth among all colleges — behind only Arizona, Kentucky, Texas, Baylor and North Carolina, and three places ahead of Indiana, the next highest-rated Big 10 team.

Costello’s claim on the MVP trophy makes it the fourth consecutive year in which an MSU commit has been named Mr. Michigan Basketball (though last year’s winner, guard Dwaun Anderson, decided not to enroll citing his troubles adjusting to the death of his mother, and  is now attending Wagner College in Staten Island, N.Y.). Center Derrick Nix and guard Keith Appling, teammates at Detroit Pershing High School who won the 2009 and 2010 Mr. Basketball awards respectively, are now mainstays of the current Spartan team that won the Big 10 championship and has made it to the Sweet Sixteen — the regional semifinals — in the ongoing NCAA post-season tournament.

It is the ninth time in the past 14 years that a player recruited by Izzo has been named Mr. Michigan Basketball (a number that includes Anderson). Of the others, only two were successfully recruited by MSU’s in-state archrival, University of Michigan.

Spartans are fortunate that Michigan State is one of just 16 schools whose fans have not already had to say, “Wait til next year.” So you can put all of this in the back of your mind for now. And — fingers tightly crossed — for two weeks, until after the championship final.

There is no doubt that the kids coming in have big shoes to fill, especially those of forward and team captain Draymond Green, whose efforts as both a player and a leader already have earned him Big 10 Player of the Year honors and have made him a solid candidate for national player of the year. And you never want to presume that even the best high school players will be able to replicate their numbers in the far-tougher arena of Big 10 basketball.

Still, if the Class of 2012 comes even close to the hype preceding it, the prospects for Izzo’s roll of success continuing well into the future look bright indeed.

Michigan State Heads To Sweet 16 After Outlasting One Tough Gremlin

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In the couple of days leading up to the Michigan State University basketball team’s second-round NCAA tournament game, there seemed to be more interest in opponent Saint Louis University’s nickname — the Billikens — than about the team itself.

Now, in the wake of the #1-seeded Spartans’ gritted-out 65-61 win Sunday over their #9-seeded opponent, we know a lot more about what a Billiken is, and a lot more about the tough-as-nails Saint Louis team that forced MSU to play a full 40 minutes to claim its place in the “Sweet Sixteen” regional semi-finals later this week.

A billiken, for the record, is an elf-like character, some sort of good-luck charm, that an art teacher from St. Louis created a bit more than 100 years ago and that the local Roman Catholic university for some reason adopted as its mascot.

This year’s Saint Louis Billikens, meanwhile, were exactly the kind of team that no one wants to draw in the NCAA Round of 32: a tough, physical squad that is well-conditioned and very well-coached by Rick Majerus, who had success in previous stints heading the programs at Marquette, Ball State, and Utah (which he took to the national championship game in 1998).

It was a team that finished its season with a record of 26 wins and eight losses and was 12-4 in the Atlantic 10 Conference, a game behind regular-season champion Temple. The Billikens surely would have been higher than a #9 seed had they not slipped against a good Xavier team in the semifinals of their conference tournament.

While Saint Louis wasn’t able to prevent Big 10 champion Michigan State from winning its 29th game against seven losses, the game was one of the closest and most intense that the Spartans played this season. MSU as a team has so many assets: size, depth of talent, bulldog toughness, the seasoning that comes from having played the nation’s toughest schedule this year, a great court talent and team leader in senior captain Draymond Green, and a head coach in Tom Izzo whose ticket to the College Basketball Hall of Fame already is punched.

The Spartans’ ability to wear down most opponents is why they have run up double-digit margins in 23 of their 29 wins so far. But they needed all of that to squeeze out a four-point victory Sunday over an opponent that didn’t match up all that well in raw talent, but was every bit a match in toughness and determination to win.

Green came through big, as the Big 10 Player of the Year so often has, with 16 points, 13 rebounds and six assists, after a performance in Friday’s game against LIU Brooklyn in which he recorded his second NCAA tournament “triple double.” Sophomore guard Keith Appling came up with one of his most impressive offensive performances with a game-leading 19 points, none more important than the three-pointer he rattled in with 1 minute 37 seconds left to play, and senior guard Brandon Wood added 10.

But Saint Louis kept it close in part by putting heavy pressure on MSU’s center tandem of sophomore Adreian Payne and junior Derrick Nix. The two combined for 14 points and eight rebounds, two days after their combined 34 points and 15 rebounds helped turn the LIU game into a rout. Despite hitting 35 percent of their field goal attempts to 54 percent for MSU, Saint Louis had three players score in double figures and had multiple point contributions from five other players.

The network TV cameras caught Izzo in a visible sigh of relief as he shook hands with Majerus at the end of the game, a sentiment undoubtedly shared by most Michigan State fans who were just glad to have that over with. The Spartans now move on to a matchup Thursday with fourth-seeded Louisville in Phoenix.

It is the 10th Sweet Sixteen appearance in 14 years for Michigan State under Izzo, who took one of those teams to the national championship in 2000 and five others to the Final Four. Maybe some folks have gotten used to this. In just a couple of years, most of Michigan State’s freshman class will have been born after Izzo became head coach in 1995.

But there are those of us who have been around long enough to remember when “success” and “Michigan State University basketball” were far from synonymous. While Jud Heathcote, Izzo’s predecessor and mentor, won a national championship with a 1979 team led by superstar Earvin “Magic” Johnson, an NCAA tournament invitation still was enough to send Spartan fans into their happy dance until Izzo. Under Izzo, it has been an every-year occurrence for 15 seasons.

Take it from someone who spent four years in the Michigan State basketball press box during the pre-Magic era in the mid-1970s. It doesn’t get old. It never will.

 

Michigan State University Basketball: 1st Round Win, Baked In A Pie

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The 22-point victory margin (89-67) that Michigan State University ran up over Long Island University Brooklyn Friday night was about proportionate to expectations for their first game in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. After all, the Spartans — the #1 seed in the West region — came in as the champions of the Big 10, the conference that clearly was the toughest in the nation this season. The Blackbirds, seeded #16, had a nice season, though again much more modest competition in the Northeast Conference.

Team leader Draymond Green scoring two of his 24 points against LIU Brooklyn. Green's second NCAA tournament triple-double in points, rebounds and assists made him the first player in college basketball to pull off that feat since Spartan legend Magic Johnson 33 years ago. (Photo credit: Dale G. Young / Detroit News)

But anyone who follows Michigan State basketball even in the least knows that Tom Izzo — who is trying to take the program to its second national championship and seventh Final Four appearance in his 17 years as head coach — was on high alert for any signs of complacency going into Friday’s game. No number 1 seed has ever lost to a number 16 seed, but it could happen someday.

And as if to underscore the point, the Spartans took the court in Columbus, Ohio, with the knowledge that not one, but two number 2 seeded teams had lost to 15 seeds: Norfolk State defeated Missouri, who some pundits had viewed as a better choice than Michigan State to win the West region and go to the Final Four, and Lehigh beat mighty Duke, a team that just two years ago won the national championship.

So the Spartans came to play. So did LIU, and for a bit more than a half, it appeared that the game would be at least a bit of a struggle. A team that tries to make up for a height disadvantage with relentless hustle, the Blackbirds held MSU to a 42-37 halftime lead — largely because they hit five of eight three-point shot attempts to the Spartans’ zero for five.

But as happened so often during a season that has produced a record of 28 wins and just seven losses, Michigan State’s depth of talent, versatility, conditioning and experience in playing the nation’s toughest schedule this year kicked in. After yet another LIU three-pointer cut the lead to 44-40, MSU opened up breathing space with an 8-2 run. And then, with the lead standing at eight points and a bit more than 13 minutes left, the Spartans went on a 21-8 binge over five minutes that built the lead to more than 20 and effectively put the game on ice.

MSU ended up with a blowout margin even though they got a little foul-happy on defense — LIU outscored them 15-6 from the free-throw line — and they were outscored by 24-9 from three-point range. Otherwise, the game provided one of the Spartans’ stronger statistical performances this year. MSU scored on 59 percent of its field goal attempts (63 percent inside the three-point arc), and had a gaping 42-19 edge in rebounds (including 15 on the offensive boards).

MSU got huge contributions from their combo at center, Adreian Payne and Derrick Nix. If they needed any added incentive, it came in the form of an ill-advised comment in the run-up to the game by an LIU player who implied his team with overcome its size disadvantage with speed because Michigan State’s big men were too slow to keep up with them. The stats indicate otherwise: Nix had 18 points on eight for 13 field-goal shooting and had eight rebounds, while Payne had 16 points on eight for 11 shooting (including a couple of thunderous dunks) and added seven rebounds.

Yet the star of the game, again, was senior forward Draymond Green. Already the Big 10 Player of the Year, the MVP of the Big 10 Conference Tournament and a candidate for national player of the year, Green had a “triple double,” with 24 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists, all game-leading numbers.

That made him the first player anywhere in college basketball to have two triple-doubles in NCAA tournament play since it was accomplished by another Michigan State legend, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, as he led the school to its first national championship in 1979. But the reaction of Green, the team’s captain, to this achievement is a measure of how much winning means to him, and how much his leadership has mattered as the MSU team bounced back from an unusually mediocre season last year.

The first triple-double, which came in last year’s first-round game against UCLA, didn’t matter, Green said. Because Michigan State lost that game, 79-77. Never mind that MSU came one basket shy of erasing an 18-point halftime deficit largely because Green scored 23, had 11 rebounds and dished out 10 assists.

The Spartans will make their bid for the Sweet 16 Sunday afternoon when they play St. Louis University in Columbus. The winner will take on Louisville next week for a chance to the move on to the “Elite Eight” regional finals.

See? Michigan State WAS The Nation’s Best 1-2 Basketball Team

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In the wake of the Big 10 Championship won Sunday by the Michigan State men’s basketball team, I’m going to do a little bragging. Not about the team per se, but about a couple of things I wrote about the team late last fall, at the very beginning of the season.

Yes, it was the Cooler on the Lake Shore blog that declared to the world on Nov. 18, 2011 that the Michigan State Spartans were the best 1-2 team in college basketball. Four months, 26 wins, only five additional losses, a three-way tie for the regular season Big 10 championship, a Big 10 Tournament championship and a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament later — I guess I was right.

Now, I realize that some people might think boastfulness is unbecoming. I typically agree. But coming from 30 years in political journalism in Washington, I have witnessed some folks achieve spectacular results through relentless self-promotion. So I’ll just have to ask you to indulge me, just this one time.

I’ll also take a second to clarify what I try to bring to the MSU sports analysis that I post on this blog. Anyone stumbling on this blog who is not a citizen of Spartan Nation could easily conclude that I’m just a blatant homer, someone wasting his free time doing rah-rah nonsense on the Internetz. This would not be totally incorrect, but it’s an incomplete portrait.

In reality, the very reason that I decided to attend Michigan State (as an out-of-stater from New York) was to pursue my goal of become a sportscaster.

I was a Television and Radio major — the name was changed to Telecommunications while I was a student — not Journalism. I did sports for the campus radio network from my first week in college; and covered men’s basketball for four years.

The four years immediately BEFORE Earvin Johnson came to MSU to work his Magic. FML.

You can probably tell I’ve followed Spartan sports intensely for the 35 years since I graduated, even though I went down another road professionally not long after I got my degree. So while I openly confess to a serious partisan bias, what I try to bring to the things I write about MSU is a bit of dispassionate analysis based on a lifetime of passion for the games people play. And I am entirely grateful to all of you who take the time to read it.

Now, as I was saying… I was prompted to write that November 18 piece after MSU defeated little Texas Southern to break into the win column for the first time in the season. It was the kind of slightly upscale scrimmage in which all major college teams engage as they are warming up for their conference schedules.

What most major college teams don’t do is what Michigan State did: play national powers North Carolina and Duke to start the season. With a team that had an unusually mediocre season last year (after two consecutive Final Four appearances) and had lost a lot of talent to graduation, injury and transfers. Oh, and did I mention the North Carolina game was played on the deck of an aircraft carrier based in San Diego, with the president of the United States in attendance, and the Duke game was four days later at Madison Square Garden in New York?

This brutal opening schedule was in keeping with a strategy to which MSU head coach Tom Izzo has held throughout his Hall of Fame-bound career. Izzo views playing tough national competition during the pre-conference schedule as seasoning that does his team good in March — a theory backed up by the fact that the Spartans have won one national championship and gone to five other Final Fours in his 17-year tenure. And while MSU lost to North Carolina by 12 and to Duke by five, there were signs that this was going to be the kind of aggressive, all-in basketball team that prospers under Izzo.

That’s what prompted me to write after the Texas Southern game on November 18: “There are some very positive takeaways from this 1-2 start. This team is playing Izzoball — crashing the boards, chasing after loose balls, and playing all out for 40 minutes, whether they are trailing by double digits as they were against North Carolina and Duke or winning by 30+  as they were against Texas Southern.”

It took a while for the nation’s basketball establishment to catch on… a little too long for my tastes. In a December 1 post headlined, “Rankled by Spartan Basketball’s Low Ranking,” I expressed the hope that MSU’s home victory over a tough Florida State team by a 16-point margin — its fifth win in a row — would persuade those who vote in the national polls to at least acknowledge the unranked Spartans belonged in the Top 25.

Reads the post:  ”So far, MSU has averaged 42.3 rebounds a game (one of the best marks of any team in the country) to 32.6 for opponents, a differential of almost 10 per game. Opposing teams have been held to an average of 53 points per game, 14 less than the Spartans; in four of the five wins, MSU has held its opponents under 50 points. And if Michigan State’s field-goal percentage looks a bit lame, check out the 36 percent rate to which they are holding the other guys. If you follow the Spartans, you will recognize numbers like that. They sound a lot like the kind of defensive effort that has been the trademark of Tom Izzo’s best teams.”

Yet it took two more weeks and three more wins — including a tough road victory at Gonzaga — for Michigan State to crack the rankings. The Spartans would ultimately run that to 15 in a row, including a 74-60 win on Dec. 17 over Bowling Green that I had the pleasure of attending. The accompanying post … with action photos! … is headlined, “My Victory at MSU, Long Overdue.”

Draymond Green, senior forward and team captain, in action in the Bowling Green game. Green would go on to be honored as Big 10 player of the year and a first-team All-American.

OK, you get the idea. But I’m just going to point out one more passage. On February 12, after MSU upset fellow Big 10 championship contender Ohio State on the road in Columbus, I wrote this: “If this Michigan State team is able to maneuver through the traps of these final six games without incurring serious damage, Izzo should be a serious candidate for another national coach of the year honor.”

Today, CBS Sports, which is the home network for the NCAA championship tournament, named Izzo as national coach of the year. It’s nice to be right.

Especially when you’re a homer.

Tom Izzo, newly named as national coach of the year, keeps an eye on the ref during MSU's early-season game against Bowling Green.

 

 

Michigan State = Big 10 Champs: The Year Go Green Took On A Double Meaning

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There is hardly anything that Michigan State senior forward Draymond Green did not accomplish in leading the Spartans first to a share of the regular season Big 10 Championship, and then on a three-game run to the Big 10 tournament championship.

Green earned conference player of the year honors (and a nomination for national player of the year) by leading MSU in scoring (16.1 points per game) and rebounding (10.4). His court savvy was evident in his 3.6 assists per game, just a smidge behind team-leading point guard Keith Appling’s 3.9. He did this while playing a Michigan State team schedule widely acknowledged to be the toughest in the nation this year, and while providing dynamic leadership as team captain whether he was on or off the court.

The only thing missing from Green’s resume this year was a single, signature basket. A buzzer-beating shot. A game winner. Or the dagger that gave the Spartans the cushion to pull out a very close game.

But now he does. And his timing could not have been more exquisite, as the shot ensured that Michigan State would outlast Ohio State Sunday in their fiercely competitive showdown for the Big 10 Tournament championship.

Green’s three-point basket with 1:36 left extended the Spartans’ tenuous lead to 67-62. MSU, one of the nation’s best defensive teams, then held Ohio State to one basket in six attempts to preserve a 68-64 victory, earn yet another banner for the crowded rafters of Breslin Center, and achieve a #1 seed for the NCAA Tournament that designates them as one of the top four teams in the country so far this season.

All this for a team, coming off a disappointing season last year, that was so overlooked by the college basketball establishment that it took six weeks at the beginning of the season to even crack the Top 25 rankings. This achievement has already earned Big 10 coach of the year honors (and a strong candidacy to be national coach of the year) for Tom Izzo, who in 17 years as head Spartan has coached one team to a national championship and taken five others to the Final Four.

The fact that Green was willing to take that long-range shot with Ohio State player Deshaun Thomas’ hand in his face showed both confidence and courage. He had a frustrating game up to that point, hitting just three of 14 field goal attempts for nine points. And with about 14 minutes remaining in the second half, Spartan fans gasped at the sight of Green sitting dazed on the court after he was bowled over by Ohio State guard Aaron Craft and struck his head on the hardwood floor.

But the Michigan State players’ response to watching their captain wobble off the court for a few head-clearing minutes on the bench spoke volumes about how much the Spartans are in sync with Izzo’s team concept, and how much they’ve matured since the squad’s terrible 42-41 defeat at Illinois Jan. 31, a day in which Green first was sick with a bug, then missed much of the game in foul trouble, and then endured a painful (though fortunately short-lasting) knee sprain near the end of the game.

Draymond Green's game-clinching three-pointer over tight defense by Ohio State's Deshaun Thomas is the latest iconic image for Spartan sports. (Credit: Dale G. Young / Detroit News)

Without the resilience they had built up over a season of challenges, the Spartans’ wheels could have fallen off. The play on which Green was hurt was a disaster: Not only did the refs miss an obvious offensive foul on Craft that sent Green flying, but Ohio State’s Thomas connected on a three-point shot (his only one in six tries during the game) that gave the Buckeyes their biggest lead in the game at 52-45.

Yet with their star and fire-up leader sitting on the bench seeing stars and tweeting birds circling his head, the Spartans did what championship teams do. They rose to the occasion with a 10-0 blitz over a little more than two minutes — which included two three-pointers by senior Brandon Wood, who led all scorers with 21 points — and before the Buckeyes knew what hit them, the Spartans held a 55-52 lead.

Although the outcome remained very much in doubt until the game’s final seconds, it was a lead the Spartans would hang on to for dear life over the final 12 minutes.

While Ohio State fell a bit short of pre-season predictions that they would be one of the top four teams in the nation, they weren’t far off. Sophomore forward Jared Sullinger — who again will face the choice of continuing as a college player or going pro this off-season — led OSU with 18 points and nine rebounds, even though he missed much of the first half with foul problems.

It took only a few minutes after the game ended for Spartan fans to get a double-barreled blast of good news, with the release of the NCAA Tournament brackets showing that MSU is number 1 in the West regional., setting up a first-round game Friday night with the Long Island University-Brooklyn Blackbirds.

The Big 10, widely considered the nation’s toughest conference this year, is well-represented overall in the NCAAs, with a total of six of its 12 making the tournament. Along with MSU, Ohio State is the number 2 seed and Wisconsin is number 4 in the East regional, Michigan is number 4 and Purdue 10 in the Midwest, and Indiana is number 4 in the South.

That means the conference has at least one team in each region — which also means there is the possibility of an all-Big 10 final. That would be a wonderful thing.

As long as one of the teams is Michigan State.

 

 

Big 10 Tournament: Spartans Prepare For Glory, Michigan Run Over By Karma

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There surely are no guarantees for Michigan State Spartisans in today’s Big 10 Tournament men’s basketball final against Ohio State. The Buckeyes are a very talented team, the overwhelming pre-season favorite to win the conference championship and briefly the #1 team in the nation before a mid-season slump knocked them into a regular season tie for first with MSU and Michigan.

OSU’s gritty 72-70 win in East Lansing last Sunday forced that three-way tie, and they looked inspired in their first two tournament games. They surged late against Purdue to break open a close game Friday. And what was left on the court after Saturday’s end-to-end 77-55 demolition of Michigan were not Wolverines, but smithereens.

(Since I’m sure anyone who cares enough to read this post undoubtedly saw or read about the details of the games, I won’t repeat. Nor will I engage in too much blatant schadenfreude over the fact that the team that skunked Michigan yesterday was the same one — their blood rivals in college sports — that their fans rooted for to beat Michigan State just six days earlier so Michigan could claim whatever validation came from backing in to a one-third share of the regular season title. I know the saying that you keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but it’s a pretty bad idea in sports  to empower your worst enemy when you may have to play them in a few days. That wasn’t gratitude that Ohio State showed Michigan yesterday.)

Yet the Spartans  have an opportunity to stake a clear claim on being the best team in what is widely regarded as the nation’s strongest men’s basketball conference this season, after shaking off a slow start Saturday and racing past Wisconsin, 65-52, in a game they led by as many as 19 points. It was MSU’s third win in three games this year over Wisconsin, the 12th-ranked team nationally, which otherwise this year was 24-6 overall and 12-3 in the Big 10.

It would be hard to find two teams more evenly matched based on the season record so far than the tournament finalists. Michigan State, which has the number 1 strength of schedule among all college teams, has 26 wins and 7 losses; Ohio State, with the number 11 strength of schedule, is 27-6. Both teams are 15-5 in Big 10 play (including their two tournament wins apiece), and each won a game this season in the other’s house, with MSU winning 58-48 in Columbus on Feb. 11 and OSU turning the tables last Sunday.

Regardless of the outcome of today’s game, the very fact that Michigan State is playing in the Big 10 Tournament finals at all — with a #2 seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament seemingly assured and a #1 seed a realistic possibility of they do win today — certifies the Big 10 Coach of the Year honor already bestowed on MSU head coach Tom Izzo, and (in my obviously non-unbiased view) should make him the front-runner for national coach of the year.

MSU fans had reason to be nervous going into the tournament. After clinching a share of the regular season Big 10 title with two games to go, the Spartans suffered a 15-point loss at Indiana (their biggest deficit this season) and, after running up a big early lead against Ohio State last Sunday, appeared deflated after star freshman forward Branden Dawson went down with what turned out to be a season-ending knee injury and ended up losing on a shot with 1 second remaining.

But a breezy 92-75 quarterfinal rout over Iowa in the tournament quarterfinal round was followed by yesterday’s ultimately comfortable win over Wisconsin, victories that showed both the depth of Izzo’s recruiting and team-oriented coaching, and his genius at getting most of his teams to adjust to adversity (as we saw in 2010 when Lucas, the team’s best player, went down in a second-round NCAA game with a torn Achilles tendon, but the Spartans made it to the Final Four anyway).

Every other team being considered for a number 1 or 2 seed in the NCAA tournament — Syracuse, Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, Ohio State — was expected to be there, ranked high in the national polls at the start of the season. Michigan State was unranked and, after testing themselves and losing to North Carolina and Duke to start the season, did not even crack the Top 25 until Week 6.

At the very least, Michigan State would easily win the comeback team of the year if there were such a prize.

The 2010-11 season was the most difficult for Izzo in a 17-year tenure as head coach that has seen the Spartans win one national championship and go to five other Final Fours. A combination of injuries, discipline problems and clashing personalities dropped the team to 19-15 overall, 9-9 for a fourth-place tie in the Big 10 regular season, a semifinal loss to underdog Penn State in the Big 10 tournament, and a one-and-done loss to a meh UCLA team in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

On paper, it did appear to look like a mess for this season. Star seniors Kalin Lucas and Durrell Summers cycled out. Guards Chris Allen and Korie Lucious, who were programmed to be major contributors by last season, had falling-outs and transferred to Iowa State. And not long before this season started, forward Delvon Roe, a coveted recruit out of high school, determined that three years was enough for his injury-ruined knees.

Yet these seeming problems produced the one biggest factor in Michigan State’s amazing turnaround: They allowed senior forward Draymond Green, one of the most inspirational players ever to wear a Spartan uniform, to gain clear command as the team’s floor and bench leader. All that produced was a Big 10 Player of the Year honor for Green, who also is a candidate for national player of the year. And he rallied a team made up heavily of sophomores and freshmen to play like Izzo’s more typically senior-oriented squads.

Here’s hoping the Spartans can crown these achievements with one more Big 10 win this afternoon.