EAST LANSING, Mich. — Cassius Winston went to bed around 4 a.m. on Sunday, closing his eyes in the infinite silence of those predawn hours, when everyone else is long asleep.
“I’m telling you,” teammate Rocket Watts explains, “the man don’t sleep.”
Five hours later, at 9 a.m., Winston arose and widened his eyes. Big day. He gathered his things and readied for Michigan State’s team breakfast, a meal that, for him, usually consists of pushing some food around a plate.
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“He’s a terrible eater,” Doug Wojcik, MSU’s recruiting coordinator, says. “It’s ridiculous.”
Sunday morning turned into Sunday afternoon and you know what happened. Winston, on a harvest of little sleep and another picky pregame meal, pulled his jersey on and delivered the most dominant, daring performance of what’s growing into a legendary Michigan State career. The senior brought rival Michigan to its knees for a fourth straight time. He scored or assisted on 20 of Michigan State’s 28 made field goals in a wire-to-wire 87-69 victory. He finished with a career-high 32 points to go with nine assists. In a game dictated by which team could confound the other’s ball-screen defense, he left Michigan chasing a ghost.
“A superb, phenomenal player,” Michigan coach Juwan Howard said.
The highlights are too varied and numerous to recount them all. There was a length of the floor dribble and layup, when he outran the entire Michigan defense by himself. There were step-in pull-ups, step-back jumpers and running scoops. There was the Iverson-esque fallaway 2 in the corner. There were the two dagger 3s in the second half.
Winston’s performance was a resounding reminder that college basketball’s best point guard resides in East Lansing. In a lot ways, his senior season began anew on Sunday. Having gone through experiences the last two months that no one should have to endure, he made it through to the other side and was out in the open on national television, for all to see, flashing money signs to the crowd and once again slaying Michigan.
Cassius Winston was Cassius Winston again.
Which makes you wonder, at this point, is there anything we don’t know about this guy? A byproduct of being a four-year college player nowadays is oversaturation and Winston— from his debut as a freshman, to his role as a program spokesman in the tumultuous 2017-18 season, to the breakout stardom of his junior year — has been prodded and probed more than anyone in the program. What’s left to uncover?
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“Ehh, that’s a really good question,” Winston said Sunday, swiveling back in forth in a chair in front of his locker. “I don’t really think there’s anything. I feel like people know everything about me. I’m an open book.”
Which brings us to those sleeping habits.
“Yeah, it’s true, he’s not big on sleep,” Khy Winston, his younger brother, said Sunday afternoon. “Our parents would try to get him to sleep, but they know how he is, so they just let him be him. The older he got, the more they stopped trying to force him to sleep.”
This is well known inside Michigan State basketball. Mention Winston’s sleep habits to anyone and you get a hard eye-roll.
“I try to work with him on it all the time, because I’m a dad,” Xavier Tillman said. “Like, you gotta get sleep, otherwise you can’t function. For him, I always tell him, if it gets to midnight, just turn it off. Just close your eyes and sit there.”
It’s not quite that easy. Winston says he typically gets, maybe, five hours of sleep a night, often less on game nights. He says, “Oh, it’s definitely not healthy, it’s definitely a problem, but for some reason I don’t get tired.” He does so with a broad, disarming smile. You almost believe he doesn’t have to sleep.
Maybe that’s why Winston plays with such a languid, torpid fashion. He lulls defenders to sleep with a sort of rope-a-dope style that defies time. Then, when least expected, he glides through space and flips in a shot that goes beyond all reason. Winston appeared to be in a state of suspended animation for his best play of the day – an impossible reverse layup with Jon Teske and Franz Wagner looming.
Sunday’s game was played with proper molten heat of a rivalry like Michigan and Michigan State. Both coaches drew technicals. The fans generated a level of noise that starved Michigan of oxygen. This one meant more.
And yet, as Winston dictated every note of every chorus, he offered nary a passing glance in his rival’s direction. He didn’t utter a word of smack. He didn’t give Zavier Simpson a knowing grin and glance. He didn’t point out to Michigan that he was doing what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted. Instead, he just played.
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There was a time, though, when Winston partook in some full-scale trash-talking in a real game. It happened once. By Khy Winston’s recollection, it was an AAU game at Spiece Fieldhouse in Fort Wayne, Ind. For some reason, C.J. Walker, now the starting point guard for Ohio State, decided it was a good idea to crawl under Winston’s skin.
“The game got a little intense and things like that,” Khy Winston said. “They were talking all kinds of stuff to him, so he started talking back. That is, I think, the only time I’ve ever seen him out there actually talking.”
Winston reserves most of his talking for the practice floor.
“In one-on-one, he’ll talk trash,” Tillman said. “Don’t get it twisted. He talks.”
It seems misunderstood that, for all the talk about Winston versus Simpson, in reality, the head-to-head hardly registers with Winston. His natural disposition exists above the fray. It’s why he operates at a different speed. As MSU director of basketball operations David Thomas puts it: “You can’t get him out of his game. It’s amazing.”
There have been times in recent Michigan-Michigan State games when Simpson made the matchup too big and allowed the moment to take him outside himself. Emotion — sometimes anger — was right on the surface, seen clearly in eyes screwed deeply into his head.
Winston, meanwhile, never steps outside the moment.
“I don’t really get into one-on-one matchups,” he said. “(Simpson) is good for his team. I’m good for my team. That’s where it is. We’ll be judged by the team that wins and the team that loses.”
What else don’t we know? Well, for most of his playing days, he’s primarily eaten Starburst or Snickers before games. His laugh, in private, according to his brother Khy, “is really annoying.” His middle name, Tillman reveals, is Xavier Lamar.
Really, though, Winston has little else to reveal. The 21-year-old is uniquely his own man. Perhaps Watts summed things up the best. When asked what the general public might not know or understand about Winston, the freshman looked around, leaned in with a cocked an eyebrow and said: “That’s Cassius Winston, bro. He’s a bad-ass mother …”
(Photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
