Goal-driven Spartans gaining believers
DETROIT
It’s almost like the whole UFO phenomenon. There are those who deeply believe in their existence and those who mock such faith. There are those who always will remain skeptical and those who always will keep an open mind.
There are those who must see to believe.
Michigan State has that kind of basketball team. When you see the Spartans live, all the negative views you accepted as true vanish.
Big Ten Conference teams don’t run. They’re not all that athletic. They can’t match up against elite programs from the Big East. You will excuse Connecticut and anyone who watched the first national semifinal Saturday for disagreeing on all points when it comes to the Spartans.
Michigan State will play for its third national championship Monday because it is everything you heard it wasn’t, which also is why the Spartans beat Kansas and Louisville in this NCAA Tournament before downing Connecticut, 82-73.
It’s safe to say 75 percent of the 72,456 in attendance at Ford Field cheered for the Spartans, that the largest gathering in Final Four history created a sea of green from one end of the stadium to the other and all in between. It’s also true Michigan State had far more to do with its victory than any advantage in the stands.
The Spartans were terrific in execution.
Perhaps more important, they were that determined in purpose.
Maybe the cause is bigger than any one Final Four weekend or next favored opponent in North Carolina. Maybe one team at one critical moment in a state’s journey through misery is meant not only to act as a temporary diversion but also to deliver a championship to a place defined today by deserted homes and soaring unemployment and foreclosure rates and an auto industry on life support.
It’s a big maybe but one that doesn’t seem impossible now.
"We played Purdue and Michigan and beat Wisconsin (by 19)," UConn coach Jim Calhoun said. "We saw tapes of (Michigan State) games. And that’s a different team. A different team. They were different against Louisville (in the Elite Eight). Special. We’re still pretty good. But they were close to special.
"I’ll be honest — that Louisville game shocked me. I never thought they could do that to Louisville. (Michigan State) has a cause. Any time you have that, it’s a great, great thing to rally people around. It would not surprise me to see (Michigan State win) Monday. They’re just different than what we saw on tape."
So many assumptions were proven true about Michigan State this March. Once completely healthy, the Spartans own talent of a top-five roster. Big Ten teams also know them well enough to not allow many transition-dominated games. Penn State likes to run. Michigan State obviously can run with success. You can run only if you rebound, and the Spartans annually rebound their jerseys off. They don’t favor a slow pace. It’s just that Big Ten teams with a hope of beating them do.
Then there is Tom Izzo.
You have heard coaches receive too much credit for winning and are assigned too much blame for not. Believe it. There are few secrets.
Little things separate great coaches from others. How effective players defend screens, how many open shots come out of offensive sets, how successful teams are out of timeouts. Michigan State on Saturday was superior at every such phase. Seeing also is believing when it comes to Izzo. He does a masterful job.
Whether that is enough Monday is unknown. North Carolina beat the Spartans by 35 points at Ford Field in December, and it didn’t seem that close. But this is a different Michigan State, different from the one that also was waxed by 18 at Purdue and lost at home to Penn State and Northwestern.
Different because its parts again are whole. Different because of a time and a place and a team.
"My favorite time was riding to the game today," Izzo said. "You go by some tough homes, some tough places. I made that an important part of the game.
"I always said as a player, you have a chance to be a difference maker, a role model, a chance to do things that make other people smile. I hope we are a ray of sunshine, a distraction, anything else we can be. Hopefully, we are not done and we can continue to make them feel a little better and us a lot better.
"I’m trying to make sure my team realizes that the goal of great programs is to win the weekend, not win the game. We got another game."
One final chance to make believers out of everyone.
Not that there should be any doubt following Saturday’s effort.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at 702-383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.
