NCAA Midwest Regional Final: Michigan State looks great in Elite Eight, hammers Louisville

They might not be the single best basketball program of the past decade, but the lords of the Big Ten have earned the right to be called the most consistent one. The Michigan State Spartans were gritty and gutsy Friday night against Kansas; Sunday afternoon against lauded Louisville, the guys in green were simply excellent. Now, they have a home-state Final Four to look forward to.
 
The Spartans needed their best game of the year if a Detroit dream was to become reality. Right on cue, coach Tom Izzo coaxed an A-plus performance from his players, who did far more than slip by the top-seeded Cardinals in the Midwest Regional final; Sparty spanked Rick Pitino's roster in Indianapolis by a 64-52 score. The 12-point trouncing at Lucas Oil Stadium sends Michigan State to Ford Field next Saturday for a national semifinal showdown against West Region champion Connecticut.
 
When a masterpiece of any kind is forged by the sweat and creativity of human beings, the truth of the work should be allowed to speak for itself. Michigan State's moment of glory doesn't need to be described so much as it ought to stand on its own merits.
 
The Spartans needed to keep this game in the low 60s or high 50s. Final score? 64-52.
 

The Spartans needed to nail mid-range and long-distance jumpers. Their final tally from 3-point range? A gleaming 8-of-16, with many more 17-footers hitting the bottom of the well--just ask Goran Suton and Travis Walton.
 
MSU had to limit turnovers and Louisville's points off turnovers. All told, the Spartans coughed up just 12 turnovers against Louisville's pressure, with only a few of those miscues leading to points for the Cardinals. Considering how the Big East champions ran past Siena and then destroyed Arizona in the Sweet 16, Michigan State's ballhandling was more than merely respectable in the home of the Indianapolis Colts.
 
State also had to state its case in the paint, keeping the likes of Samardo Samuels and Terrence Williams off the offensive glass for the second-chance points Louisville thrives on. When 40 minutes had come and gone, Samuels and Williams combined for just 4 offensive rebounds. Samuels--in the face of Suton's first-rate defense--failed to score a single point, and "T-Will," as he's known in the Louisville camp, registered a meager 5 points on a day when Walton locked him down.
 
One by one, the pregame keys and major matchups all lined up in favor of Michigan State. Tempo, score, turnovers, rebounding, you name it--the contours of this consequential contest were colored green, not red.
 
Then consider the individuals who enabled MSU's blended team game to spill into full flower on the floor.
 
Suton, a senior, played one of the very best games of his basketball life by racking up 19 points and 10 assists in addition to his shutout of Samuels. Walton, also a senior, packed a punch at both ends of the floor by hitting some key shots and wiping out Williams in a head-to-head battle.
 
Off the bench, the Spartans got the inside-outside mix a championship team has to have. In the paint, Draymond Green pulled down 10 boards to cement MSU's superiority on the glass. On the wings, Durrell Summers--the man who picked up the Spartans in mid-January and then starred late in the Kansas comeback on Friday--nailed his threes for 12 big points, most of which came during MSU's decisive second-half surge.
 
This win was so impressive that Raymar Morgan--whom many people felt was an absolutely essential part of a win over Louisville--didn't score a single point. Morgan was playing with a face mask, due to a broken nose suffered in the regional semifinals, but the fact still remains that his teammates were 12 points better than the overall No. 1 seed in the entire NCAA Tournament. Defense, rebounding, and the other staples of "Izzo Ball" all surfaced at just the right time, and as a result, Detroit has a roster of home-state hardwood heroes to cheer for when the Final Four tips off.

Speaking of the 2009 Final Four, it's going to be significant and historic for reasons that transcend the obvious in-state angle.
 
When the lads from East Lansing make the short and sweet commute to the Motor City for the Final Four, they'll be playing a program that has won two national championships in the past 11 years (Connecticut), and they'll be joined in Detroit by a program that has won a national title and reached three Final Fours in the past five seasons (North Carolina). However, it's fair to say that this win over Louisville makes Michigan State the most reliable college basketball powerhouse in recent memory.
 
MSU has now reached more Final Fours (5) than any other school over the past 11 years. The Spartans can also boast an incredible accomplishment--namely, that no Izzo-coached senior class since the class of 1998 has missed out on the Final Four. By reaching the last and most meaningful weekend of the college basketball season in 2001, 2005, and now 2009 (among other years), series of seniors at Sparty have all been able to say, without exception, that they've been able to reach the Final Four at least once. Freshmen who joined MSU in the fall of 2001 or the fall of 2005 might have required a full four seasons to ultimately reach their goal, but they ultimately found the Promised Land. The Izzo era is a time of incredible consistency, and while the 5-1 record in regional finals is remarkable, it's the senior class streak that carries even more meaning in the Michigan State basketball family.
 
And so it is written: A decorated basketball school already graced with an iconic coach and a tradition of winning would not have suffered a huge blow to its reputation if the Cardinals from Kentucky couldn't have been corralled on Sunday in Indianapolis. Now that Louisville has been licked, however, the people who comprise the Michigan State program have affirmed and enhanced their status to a considerable degree.

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