Final Four!!!! YES!!!

Michigan State a dangerous dark horse in heavyweight Final Four field

INDIANAPOLIS – It helps that the name across the front of the jersey is Michigan State, that the head coach is Tom Izzo, that we’ve come to expect that combination to produce basketball teams that still are competing when most of the teams in Division I have returned to the scholarship athlete’s version of “normal campus life.”

So maybe that’s why this is being billed across the board as a Final Four of heavyweights.

LooseGoose wrote:More on Jud.

Jud Heathcote won't attend the Final Four in Indianapolis, but his presence will be felt.

The former Michigan State coach, who guided Magic Johnson and the Spartans to their classic 1979 NCAA championship with Magic Johnson, is firmly ensconced in Spokane, Wash., at the age of 87 and struggles with limited mobility these days.

He'll watch Saturday's game on TV like the rest of us, rooting for his former assistant Tom Izzo to elevate Spartan basketball tradition even further as the Big Ten "underdogs" face Duke in the semifinals.

It's amazing how far Izzo has come, from a part-time assistant hired out of Northern Michigan by Heathcote in 1983 to one of America's most respected college coaches in his 20th year at the helm.

He credits much of his success to Heathcote, just like I owe a debt of gratitude to the old coach for extending a welcoming hand when I was a student reporter learning the ropes covering MSU before I came to Sioux Falls.

Most assume that Green and White basketball was always like this, with the Spartans performing their March magic and chasing national titles, but I can assure you that isn't the case.

http://www.argusleader.com/story/stu-whitney/2015/04/02/jud-heathcote-michigan-state-izzo-stu-whitney/70821160/

LooseGoose wrote:Spartan Basketball @MSU_Basketball · 57m 57 minutes ago
Congrats Colby Wollenman-the recipient of the Elite 89 Award-presented to the player w/ top cumulative GPA among Final Four participants.

Michigan State

In the interests of journalistic transparency, it is here that I must admit I was a professor at Michigan State for four years and have no ability to be objective when it comes to Spartan basketball.

Now, this may not be Tom Izzo’s most talented team, but they’re back — a bunch of Burger King All-Americans, scrapping and toiling their way to the NCAA’s blue blood showcase.

The evolution of Tom Izzo

Aging? Sure. Softening? Maybe. But a fire still burns inside the Spartans' coach

By Joe Rexrode, Detroit Free Press

Indianapolis — It's like happy hour every night. Minus the alcohol, of course.

But when Michigan State's basketball team hits the road, hunkers down in a hotel and finishes its team meal at night, almost no one pushes away from the table when they're done eating.

Eventually, Tom Izzo or one of his assistants will wander in and have to order the players up to their rooms. Like they did Wednesday in the hospitality room on the Spartans' first night in Indianapolis, the site of this year's Final Four.

"We were there till midnight or 1 a.m. last night," senior Travis Trice said Thursday. "You've really got to fight us to get us away from each other."

It didn't used to be that way. There were times early in his career, junior forward Matt Costello admits, when "everybody would just kind of separate, especially on the road"

Indianapolis — For Michigan State to be successful, every player needs to do his job.

It's something Tom Izzo has stressed with a lot of his teams, but the phrase he once heard from New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick has taken on greater significance this season.

The Spartans are in the Final Four and will take on Duke at 6:09 p.m. Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium in the first of two national semifinals, and if they have any shot of pulling off the upset, they'll need to follow that ideal as well as they have all season.

That's because the star power is not on Michigan State's side. Sure, the Spartans have talent — a team doesn't get this far without having good players. But the lottery picks are on the other rosters this time around.

INDIANAPOLIS – Defense got Michigan State here.

Offense is the Spartans' ticket to staying until Monday.

And that's interesting, considering roughly 90% of the basketball questions the Spartans have answered this week have to do with stopping Duke when the teams meet Saturday in the national semifinals.

The short answer on that is simple: They can't. They won't.

But what they can do is score, a lot, and enough to advance to Monday's national title game if they can put together their most efficient, mistake-free, surgical offensive performance yet.

Free Press sports writer Joe Rexrode scouts Saturday's national semifinal between No. 7 seed Michigan State and No. 1 seed Duke:

Backcourts

Backcourts with size bother MSU, and that's not much of an issue here. Quinn Cook is 6-feet-2, Tyus Jones 6-1. But they can drive and shoot. Cook has raised his game this season and this tournament, very similar to MSU's Travis Trice. The production of both players will say a lot about the outcome. Meanwhile, Lourawls (Tum Tum) Nairn has a much larger role than he did when the teams first met, and his defense on Tyus Jones will be key. Denzel Valentine and Matt Jones, both 6-5, match up logically. Matt Jones has been hitting shots, but Valentine likely will do a lot as a help defender.

Edge: Even

LooseGoose wrote:Spartan Basketball @MSU_Basketball · 57m 57 minutes ago
Congrats Colby Wollenman-the recipient of the Elite 89 Award-presented to the player w/ top cumulative GPA among Final Four participants.

INDIANAPOLIS -- There was a plan, at one point in time, for Jahlil Okafor and Tyus Jones to lead Michigan State here to the 2015 Final Four as a duo of standout freshmen.

That plan, as so many in the recruiting world do, fell apart.

"I love Tom Izzo and the coaching staff," Okafor said. "He built a great relationship with my family. There was definitely a time I thought I could end up at Michigan State."

Jones also remembered hearing from Izzo early in his recruiting process and building a strong relationship with him and the Michigan State staff.

"They have a great program, a lot of tradition, and he's done a great job with that school and with their program," Jones said. "I have a lot of respect for him."

The duo's decisions helped set the two teams on different paths to their semifinal matchup.

Nairn has told the story of how, during Miami's warm summer months, Brown would take him and some of the other boys to NFL games at Dolphin Stadium. Their tickets were for the parking lot. There, Nairn hawked unlicensed T-shirts to fans passing by. After the games, once the parking lot cleared, he and his teammates handed their billfolds over to Brown, not knowing where the money would go.

The same could be said for the over $2 million in DOE vouchers and $236,000 in state-run tax-credit scholarships that flowed into South Florida Prep, according to Garcia-Roberts' reporting.

That money didn't translate to the basketball court. South Florida Prep didn't have one. Brown's team played all road games. Practices were held outside -- in a park, under the sun, every day. Locals sometimes ride bikes across the concrete court, through the middle of practice, guns in-hand.

Then there were the games.

InTenSity wrote:LooseGoose, did you get this one?

Nairn has told the story of how, during Miami's warm summer months, Brown would take him and some of the other boys to NFL games at Dolphin Stadium. Their tickets were for the parking lot. There, Nairn hawked unlicensed T-shirts to fans passing by. After the games, once the parking lot cleared, he and his teammates handed their billfolds over to Brown, not knowing where the money would go.

The same could be said for the over $2 million in DOE vouchers and $236,000 in state-run tax-credit scholarships that flowed into South Florida Prep, according to Garcia-Roberts' reporting.

That money didn't translate to the basketball court. South Florida Prep didn't have one. Brown's team played all road games. Practices were held outside -- in a park, under the sun, every day. Locals sometimes ride bikes across the concrete court, through the middle of practice, guns in-hand.

Then there were the games.

Tum Tum

Michigan State fans find Final Four practice experience 'electrifying' and 'awesome'

INDIANAPOLIS -- Awash in a sea of blue Kentucky and Duke shirts sat six fans from Lansing, all clad in their green and white, smiles on their faces.

It was open practice day for the Final Four at Lucas Oil Stadium and Charlita Torbert, her son Kelvin Jr., Jonathan and Miki Patterson, their daughter Makyra and friend Jasmine Goins watched the Michigan State basketball team practice for 50 minutes while surrounded by Blue Devils and Wildcats.

"Well, we bleed green, so it doesn't really matter if we're in a sea of blue," Charlita said, laughing.

She's used to the surroundings. Her husband, Kelvin Torbert Sr. was a member of the 2005 Spartans basketball team that advanced to the Final Four in St. Louis.

The average s-curve ranking of the teams that each Final Four participant defeated looks like this:

Kentucky: 32.0 (lowest 8 seed)

Duke: 30.5 (middle of the pack 8 seed)

Wisconsin: 28.3 (lowest 7 seed)

Michigan State: 17.8 (above-average 5 seed)

That’s a significant difference in the strength of schedules that these teams had to play to get here. Looking at it another way, Kentucky and Duke played, on average, an 8-seed four times and Wisconsin played a 7-seed four times. Michigan State? They played the equivalent of four straight 5-seeds.

Michigan State beat the toughest #2 seed (Virginia) and three of the top 15 teams in the country. Comparatively, Wisconsin beat just two top-15 teams while Duke & Kentucky only beat one.

INDIANAPOLIS -- The jubilation was loud as Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo and his team took the stage inside the Indiana Convention Center on Friday evening but his final words elicited the largest response from the couple thousand in attendance.

"We're going to play our ass off for ya, alright?"

"It's a little weird coming to a pep rally this big," Izzo said. "This is kind of football-ish. We really appreciate you coming down for this.

"This is our third trip to the final four in Indianapolis. The first one was a charm and we're looking to get back to that first one."

Fans were treated to free T-shirts, snacks, pom-pons. Other speakers included football coach Mark Dantonio, university president Lou Anna Simon and athletic director Mark Hollis.

As Izzo's final words rang over the crowd and the school's fight song was played by the pep band, young and old alike moved toward the stage to collect autographs from the players.