Lights, camera, practice for home-state Spartans
By Brian Manzullo
USBWA Scholarship Entry

DETROIT – The clock struck noon Friday. After one long, anxious week of waiting, it was time for the Michigan State men’s basketball team to take the Final Four court at Ford Field.

Players and coaches stepped out of the locker room and through the southwest tunnel. They saw a stadium painted green and white, a collaboration of several thousand fans on their feet and screaming. “Go green!” one side bellowed. “Go white!” the other.

The Spartans’ highlight reel played on the screens above. The marching band played their fight song. The fans screamed louder. Finally, the buzzer sounded, and one by one the players took the court and turned their focus to the task at hand.

Not to Connecticut, their first opponent. To practice.

“We’ve had many games with less people than that,” pointed out senior center Idong Ibok. “It was unbelievable.”

Nearly 20,000 fans, mostly clad in green and white, poured into the stands that morning to watch Michigan State, as well as Villanova, Connecticut and North Carolina, practice for an allotted 50 minutes each.

By comparison, the Breslin Student Events Center in East Lansing, where the Spartans call home, seats up to 16,280 during home basketball games. Ford Field will seat more than 70,000 when MSU and UConn tip off at 6:07 p.m. Saturday.

Although the players and coaches seemed to switch their focus to working out, Friday felt nothing like a practice for them. Every dunk, behind-the-back pass and alley-oop spawned applause. Cheerleaders sprawled behind the baskets and kept fans involved in chants. Even the team’s mascot, Sparty, marched up and down the sidelines.

In essence the players, 92 miles from the Breslin Center, caught only a glimpse of what to expect when they open play Saturday. They couldn’t help but smile.

“I kept catching myself looking up at the stands and thinking, ‘Wow, we are at a practice right now, and we have, like, 15,000 people here watching us,’” said freshman guard Austin Thornton. “It was a lot of fun.”

That home-court advantage is a luxury the No. 2 seeded Spartans may need as an underdog to the top-seeded Huskies.

Only six other teams in Final Four history played for the national championship in their home state. Four succeeded, but the last two – Duke in 1994 and Purdue in 1980 – did not.

Still, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo eyed Ford Field from the time it was announced as 2009’s Final Four host. He talked with his players as early as last summer about the opportunity to play for a national championship in Michigan. 

With the first game just moments away, Ibok still couldn’t grasp what it is like. He could only use one word.

“Unbelievable,” he said. “Before it was announced, I never even imagined it. Even afterward, I didn’t imagine it playing out this way. It’s unbelievable. 

“But just getting here isn’t good enough. We still need to work and focus for Saturday.”

Hence, Friday’s open practice, where players stretched, shot and scrimmaged for the 50 allowed minutes. Some had a bit of fun in the meantime, shooting from half-court and providing fans with entertainment.

Once time was up, Izzo had his players walk to the edge of the court and thank the fans. It was a ritual he derived from his time as an assistant to former Detroit Pistons coach Flip Saunders at the Goodwill Games in 2001.

“Flip huddled the players in the middle and thanked the fans,” Izzo said afterward. “I thought that was an awesome gesture. So I guess I copied it.

“I just told the guys to spend the moment and do two things: Thank the people that came, thank Detroit, and then soak it in because you’re not going to get to soak it in from here on in. It’s dog-eat-dog (in the Final Four).”

For freshman guard Korie Lucious, who described his first Final Four experience as “unreal,” the first challenge is getting sleep Friday night.

“It’s going to be tough,” he said with a laugh.

manzu1bj@cmich.edu