0000115508
DETROIT FREE PRESS
050328
Monday, March 28, 2005
METRO FINAL CHASER
1A
Photo DAVID P. GILKEY/Detroit Free Press;Photo JULIAN H. GONZALEZ/Detroit Free Press
DAVID P. GILKEY/Detroit Free Press
You want a reason to scream? Try this: Michigan State senior Kelvin Torbert, once the country's top-ranked high school prospect, wears a hat that proves the Spartans are bound for the Final Four.
JULIAN H. GONZALEZ/Detroit Free Press
Michigan State coach Tom Izzo makes his point to Shannon Brown during the first overtime.
MITCH ALBOM
Free Press columnist
SEE ALSO STATE EDITION, PAGE 1A
Copyright (c) 2005, Detroit Free Press
MARCH ON!
SPARTANS PUNCH SURPRISE TICKET TO ST. LOUIS FOR FINAL FOUR
NCAA TOURNAMENT | MICHIGAN STATE 94, KENTUCKY 88 (2 OT)
AUSTIN, Texas - They may not be great, but they're awfully good. They're may not be big, but they play huge. They may not be stars, but they command the spotlight. And they may not be where they're supposed to be, but there they are anyhow, up on the ladder, cutting down nets, surviving a game that would have killed anyone older than a college kid, an exhausting, sweat-dripping, double-overtime war, a classic by sunset, a game they thought they had won once, but had to win again and again.
Say what you will about these Michigan State Spartans, but say it in St. Louis, because that's where they will play their next game, as one of the four remaining teams in college basketball's biggest contest. The Spartans may be the lowest-seeded team in the men's Final Four - but they'll arrive as high as a dream can take you.
"I thought it was one of the great games of - maybe not all-time - but it seemed like all-time to me," said MSU coach Tom Izzo, after Sunday's 94-88 victory over Kentucky.
Great? It was amazing by any measure, the culmination of perhaps the finest semifinal weekend in NCAA history, three games going into overtime and this one - well, this one squeezing both teams like dishrags, draining them of everything they had. Anyone who doubted the Spartans' resolve wasn't watching. Anyone who doubted their character wasn't watching. Anyone who doubted their seniors wasn't watching.
And, for a few nervous moments, anyone who loved Michigan State wasn't watching - because he was hiding under the couch.
Never more than in the final seconds of regulation. This was one of those moments that will hang in your mind for eternity. The fifth-seeded Spartans were one tick away, the thinnest of margins from their dreamed-of glory, a razor's edge, a cilia, a sheath. Then Kentucky's Patrick Sparks, who a minute before had been hanging his head on the bench, the goat of the game, having missed the front of a one-and-one that would have tied it, got the ball by pure accident, a ricochet off the rim after a teammate's poor shot, and there was no time left and from the top of the key, he let it fly.
Anything could have happened. By that point, what hadn't? The entire arena seemed to inhale as the ball rolled off the front of the rim, then rolled around the back ...
"I thought it was gonna stay up there forever," Izzo said.
Instead it finally, innocently, plunked through the net. Sparks screamed with the ferocity of a freed prisoner. And the game was tied, 75 apiece. The miracle that would have been a Michigan State victory seemed ready to evaporate.
"No biggie," the Spartans seemed to say.
They'd just come back and do it again.
Every Spartan did something
And they did. Actually, they did it twice. They survived the first overtime by rebounding their misses until they finally made a shot, and by clamping down so hard defensively that Kentucky dribbled out the final seconds without even getting a shot.
And they did it in the second overtime keeping up that defense, by making their free throws and by never losing their cool.
They did it with an amazing shooting night from Shannon Brown, voted the regional's most outstanding player, who hit his first seven shots, missed just two all game, and made five three-pointers en route to a 24-point performance.
They did it with Maurice Ager, who continues to come up big, 21 points and eight rebounds.
They did it with Paul Davis, continuing his string of hard-nosed performances, 15 points, 11 rebounds, grabbing the offensive boards when MSU needed them most, putting back his own miss at a crucial moment, and slamming home a rebound for the Spartans' final basket of the very long night.
Alan Anderson, who missed the shot, "set me up really nicely," Davis joked afterward, with Anderson right behind him. Anderson whispered in his ear and laughed.
"Oh," Davis added, "and he should have gotten an assist but they didn't give him one."
The Spartans did it with their juniors, their sophomores, their freshman, and, yes, with their seniors. Here was Kelvin Torbert, playing some big minutes, some big defense, flying down the court to block a Rajon Rondo shot, then racing downcourt to take the ball down the baseline for a reverse lay-up.
Here was Chris Hill, with a reverse lay-up of his own, and a big three-pointer.
And here was Anderson, in the second overtime, at the free-throw line, which is where this Spartans saga began, isn't it? A few weeks ago, with Anderson's missing free throws at the end of MSU's Big Ten tournament opener against Iowa, a loss that had critics believing the NCAA tournament was an exercise in futility?
But what do you know? Anderson was back again, at the stripe, just 12 seconds left in the second OT. And he hit the first free throw and he hit the second, and the game was iced, and the Spartans were on their way.
Oh. By the way. Anderson was 6-for-6 from the line.
"How did you recover so well from that Big Ten game?" he was asked afterward.
"Coach smashed the tape with a sledgehammer," he said, laughing. "He smashed the misses out of me."
Coach K and Tubby defeated
A word here for Izzo, who looked both proud and semi-stunned by what his players had accomplished. In less than 48 hours, they had turned back top-seeded Duke and second-seeded Kentucky, two of the most storied programs in college basketball history, and Izzo had bested Mike Krzyzewski and Tubby Smith, two legends in the game.
Their reward? North Carolina and Roy Williams this Saturday night in the national semifinal.
But honestly, does that scare anyone now?
"I have to credit my mentor, Jud Heathcote," Izzo said, nodding to the back of the room, where Jud was standing. "He called me after the Big Ten tournament and said, ‘You gotta put the regular season behind you. You gotta get your team to believe in the good things that it's done, not the bad.'
"You know, there's a lot of coaches who call you after a win. But there's not many coaches who will call you after a loss."
Everyone will be calling now. And who knows where this is going? There is no predicting what this team can do.
At one point Sunday night green jerseys were smothering Kentucky at every turn. One shot denied, another shot altered, another shot hassled and missed, and then the ball shot out into a three-on-one MSU break. Torbert took the ball and seemed to throw it into the abyss, it just hung there, waiting -who is that pass to? - until Ager came soaring down the middle to do what Torbert always knew he would, snag the ball midair and ram it through the rim. It was as if they were playing their own private game, above the rim, above all the doubters.
Above - and beyond. Beyond expectations. Maybe beyond belief. Then again, belief, this year, seems to be measured by the Spartans. Lead on, kids. Who won't follow now?
Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or albom@freepress.com. Catch "The Mitch Albom Show" 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WJR-AM (760). Also catch "Monday Sports Albom" 7-8 p.m. Mondays on WJR. To read recent columns, go to www.freep.com/index/albom.
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