The Michigan State Spartans concluded a very successful season just over a week ago. They rode a two-seed past the defending champions, the top overall seed, and a supremely talented Connecticut squad before falling to the obvious best team in the nation, the NCAA champion Tar Heels.
After a brief rest, the Spartans will eventually get back to work in East Lansing, and it won't be a rebuilding project. It will be a reloading one. They did lose Goran Suton, Travis Walton and Marquise Gray to graduation, but there's plenty left for Tom Izzo to make another Final Four run -- one that would be his sixth in the past 12 years.
Late in the first half of an incredibly entertaining national semifinal game, players from Connecticut and Michigan State had to be separated by officials. The incident stemmed from a hard foul on Michigan State's Travis Walton, where he got a good piece of Jeff Adrien under the basket.
As Walton first fell to the ground, Adrian attempted to push him but whiffed. Walton took exception and swiped back at Adrian, and then an amoeba formed under the basket. Little more than pushing and shoving -- really, just grandstanding, but you can't blame them -- occurred before cooler heads prevailed and the players were separated. Of note, Hasheem Thabeet really looked like he wanted to fight someone (pictured right with teammates restraining him).
From an individual standpoint, this season has been an absolute nightmare for Raymar Morgan. The Michigan State junior came into the season with a chance to get into lottery pick position, as long as his game kept progressing.
Instead, he regressed.
Every regular statistic across the board is down for Morgan this year. He averaged 14 points a game as a sophomore. Since January 17 this season, he's only gotten 5.5 a night. If you would have told Tom Izzo coming into the season he'd be heading to the Final Four with this low of an offensive output from Morgan, he would have thought you were nuts.
Take everything you think you know about this Final Four and toss it in the waste bin with the scrap paper that was once your brackets. The brackets that had Pittsburgh meeting Louisville for the national title. The brackets that were oh so certain Michigan State of the overrated Big Ten would, exactly like IKEA furniture, collapse after one week. The brackets that said Wake Forest was underrated and Arizona's bid was a career achievement award.
Forget it all, because like your brackets, this Final Four will be all about what you didn't know.
INDIANAPOLIS -- On his tippy toes, he might be 5-10, very easy to lose in the enormity of a football stadium where faces look like matrix dots and crowd noise drifts to the ozone. But no one strikes a larger pose in the Midwest today than Tom Izzo, public defender of the Big Ten's battered self-esteem. If trends and hipness start on both coasts in America, college basketball in the heartland also has been taking on an irrelevant, plodding look, to the point I stopped watching.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- There's no place like home for the Final Four.
Goran Suton scores 19 points and pulls down 10 rebounds and the Spartans hold Louisville under 40 percent shooting to knock off the overall top seed Cardinals 64-52 and advance to the final weekend for the fifth time in the last 11 years.
Only 90 miles from their campus, the Spartans will play Connecticut on Saturday at Ford Field in Detroit. A crowd of 72,000, the largest ever for college basketball's signature event, is expected for each game.
No, it was most certainly not pretty. Until the second half of the final minute, Michigan State never looked like it had this won. It had trouble all night finding somebody other than Goran Suton to give them any consistent scoring, and in the first half Kansas beat the Spartans at their own game -- pushing them around on the boards.
But while Kansas proved to be a more worthy defending champion than anybody imagined it'd be, Michigan State has more.
After a horrifying stretch where it dropped six of seven games, USC caught fire at the right time of the season. They won five straight games, including a Pac-10 tournament championship, to close out the regular season. They followed that up with a very decisive beatdown of Boston College (from the vaunted ACC) Friday in their NCAA Tournament opener.
Sunday, Michigan State finally put an end to the impressive Trojan streak. The teams traded leads for much of the very physical contest, but the depth of Michigan State propelled them to victory.
If D.J. White and Eric Gordon play like they did in Ann Arbor on Tuesday night all season, I don't know that there's anybody in this country that can beat the Hoosiers. Of course, it will probably be a bit tougher to do against North Carolina than Michigan, but it's not the Hoosiers' fault the Big Ten is very top heavy this year.
White scored 21 points and also grabbed 22 boards to become the first Hoosier to have a 20/20 game since Alan Henderson in 1995. D.J. was already scary enough in his first three years on campus, now that he's gotten into much better shape physically, he's an absolute beast.
Eric Gordon matched his number with 23 points, including 4 three-pointers, just another ho-hum night for the youngster. He just makes everything he does look so easy, which you just don't see freshman do very often. At least not the kind that stick around longer than a year.
For Michigan, Manny Harris-speaking of freshman-led the team with 19 points. There's hope on the horizon, Wolverines fans!
The Michigan State Spartans concluded a very successful season just over a week ago. They rode a two-seed past the defending champions, the top overall seed, and a supremely talented Connecticut squad before falling to the obvious best team in the nation, the NCAA champion Tar Heels. 
Late in the first half of an incredibly entertaining national semifinal game, players from 
From an individual standpoint, this season has been an absolute nightmare for 
Take everything you think you know about this Final Four and toss it in the waste bin with the scrap paper that was once your brackets. The brackets that had 
INDIANAPOLIS -- On his tippy toes, he might be 5-10, very easy to lose in the enormity of a football stadium where faces look like matrix dots and crowd noise drifts to the ozone. But no one strikes a larger pose in the Midwest today than 
No, it was most certainly not pretty. Until the second half of the final minute, Michigan State never looked like it had this won. It had trouble all night finding somebody other than 
After a horrifying stretch where it dropped six of seven games, USC caught fire at the right time of the season. They won five straight games, including a Pac-10 tournament championship, to close out the regular season. They followed that up with a very decisive beatdown of Boston College (from the vaunted ACC) Friday in their NCAA Tournament opener. 
