Bulldogs awaken Spartans from championship dreams

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Indianapolis — Ever wake up in the morning and think today is just not your day?

Ever watch the MSU men’s basketball team this season and think this is just not their year?

The Spartans had been hitting the snooze button on that bad dream for months. They overcame injuries, suspensions and chemistry issues that could have made them one-and-done and, instead, made a remarkable run to the Final Four this weekend in Indianapolis.

But then the well-oiled machine (and if you call them a “Cinderella,” you must not follow college basketball) that is the Butler Bulldogs issued the Spartans a blow they couldn’t overcome.

That sound you hear is the alarm ringing on a dream MSU tourney run.

Sorry, Spartans fans, but Butler was the team that deserved to win on Saturday night. They might not have been the better team on paper and certainly wouldn’t have had the advantage against a full-strength MSU squad.

But as the Spartans — a team which has been the beneficiary of a few breaks themselves over the course of this tournament — know, you don’t stop and think in March. You just go out and play. Win and advance. No questions asked.

“It’s what we’ve strived for since the beginning, since the fall when we did fundamentals on defense,” Butler guard-forward Gordon Hayward said. “The whole year, we talked about the next game. That’s what we’re focusing on.”

Many people — players, analysts, writers, coaches — speculated this week that the Spartans and Bulldogs were near mirrors of each other. I agreed. I also thought that, though the teams were eerily similar in style of play and philosophy, MSU had just enough of the edge in each department to find a way to win.

The Bulldogs — and, consequently, the final score — disagreed.

“They deserved to win,” Izzo said. “They earned the right to win. They played kind of our game, meaning the physical nature game.”

Izzo told an anecdote at the podium afterward about when he was an assistant under Jud Heathcote and the Spartans blew a lead to lose to Kansas in the Sweet 16. Izzo said he was proud of the team but Heathcote was perturbed.

“He was so mad after the game,” Izzo said. “I thought, ‘Our players played their tails off.’ He told me he would thank them in a week, but he couldn’t thank them now because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You never know if you’re ever getting back.

“He never got back.”

The Spartans will be back. They’ll be a favorable pick to return to their third straight Final Four next season in Houston.

But the point is that in a week, we can look back on how impressive a performance it was from Izzo and the core of players who gave it their all through thick and thin in this tournament.

But for now, the Spartans’ alarm is going to be ringing for a while.

Joey Nowak is a State News men’s basketball reporter. He can be reached at nowakjo2@msu.edu.

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