Mar 31, 2019; Washington, DC, USA; The Michigan State Spartans celebrate after beating the Duke Blue Devils in the championship game of the east regional of the 2019 NCAA Tournament at Capital One Arena. Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

Understanding Michigan State is found on the road back to Minneapolis

Brendan Quinn
Apr 5, 2019

MINNEAPOLIS — The Michigan State team bus rolled by the jet-black spaceship parked beside MN-55 just over five months ago. U.S. Bank Stadium is an enormous mass of angles and glass and sharp dimensions. It is impossible to miss. That’s why all the necks in the bus craned to the left, looking west. They didn’t know they were looking into a crystal ball.

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“That’s where the Final Four is this year,” a voice spoke up.

This was Oct. 27. Conversations popped up that weekend about Michigan State somehow finding its way back to Minneapolis. What a coincidence that’d be, they said. The only problem, though, was that on this day, a fall Saturday in Minnesota, the Spartans were pretty well whacked by a legitimate national title contender. Gonzaga was no joke, blowing past Michigan State in a closed door scrimmage held at the Target Center, exposing some shortcomings and showing how far MSU was from being a team that could reach the Final Four.

So.

Let’s pause here. 

Want to understand how far the road is from there to here? Start at Cassius Winston’s locker inside U.S. Bank Stadium on Thursday. Winston carries the endearing disposition of someone who is terrible at lying. The answer is always in his eyes and, despite his ability to deceive on the court, he’s easily exposed in conversation. He was asked, all this time later, if he could fathom the team that was carved up by Gonzaga returning to Minneapolis to play in the Final Four.

“I want to say it was this — we knew what we were capable of,” he said. “We knew we had a lot of things we had to change, though.”

Perhaps a job as a diplomat could be in his future if basketball doesn’t work out. Winston said the right thing, but his eyes said, no — hell no — he did not see this happening. To quote a member of the Michigan State staff who spoke to The Athletic on the night of the Gonzaga scrimmage: “We’re good, but we suck.” That’s where the Spartans were then. Not two weeks later they were nearly run out of the gym by Kansas. Only a late run kept the score close. This was not a national championship contender in November. Nor was it in December.

“Back then, it was, how in the (use your imagination) are we going to win 20 games? We ain’t gonna make the tournament!” said Doug Wojcik, MSU’s recruiting coordinator and quasi-consigliere to Tom Izzo, recounting the late-night conversations back then. “That was the period from like late November to the middle of December. Seriously. It was: How good are we? We aren’t very good. It was very hard to tell.”

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It’s worth reconsidering the contours of this season to appreciate the present. Michigan State is indeed back in Minneapolis because, as it would turn out, it needed to become a completely different team to follow the bread crumbs back here. To hear the players and coaches speak of their former selves is an out-of-body experience — like they’re seeing a picture of themselves that they don’t remember posing for.

Winston was surrounded on Thursday by a pack of reporters foraging for quotes. The kid from Detroit, now a legitimate rock star. He’s gone nationwide. He’s the guy who took down Duke and King Zion, and did so with a smile. Savage politeness. Now everyone wants a piece of The Cassius Winston Story. Five months ago, though, the last time MSU was in Minneapolis? Winston was the third option against Gonzaga. Nick Ward attempted 10 shots, took 10 free throws and led the Spartans with 22 points. Joshua Langford attempted 11 shots, including six 3s. Winston still ran the show at point guard and scored 16 points, but he deferred to the principal scorers. Back then, Michigan State could score, but the offense was still disjointed. Square pegs, round roles, etc. The solution — No. 5, Winston — was there in plain sight. It simply took time and an unfortunate injury to Langford to develop.

“Feels like forever ago,” Winston said on Thursday. “I feel like we were a totally different team then. I think we changed our identity. We changed how we play. We changed our offense, almost, in a way. All types of things. Just constantly growing, adjusting. We constantly got closer too. That’s the bigger thing.”

Consider that Matt McQuaid didn’t score against Gonzaga. He went 0-of-3 from the field. When the two coaching staffs swapped thoughts on each other’s team afterward, a member of the Gonzaga staff wondered aloud if the Spartans could compete at the highest level with McQuaid as an integral part of the lineup. Nowadays anyone would shiver at the thought of this Michigan State team without McQuaid. All he does is make big shots and play 35-plus minutes of tyrannical defense.

More examples pour forth. Kenny Goins was no more a threat to make 3s against Gonzaga than Izzo was to check in and dunk the ball. Last week, that same Kenny Goins drilled two haymaker 3s in the second half to knock Duke out of the Elite Eight. Xavier Tillman was second fiddle to Ward in the frontcourt. Now he’s blossoming into an NBA prospect and being hailed, no pun intended, as the Spartans’ X-factor. Aaron Henry, a freshman, was introduced to college basketball against Gonzaga and had, he will admit, no clue what was going on. Last week he played 38 minutes in both the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight and proved he’s among the best developing players in college basketball.

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“We are far removed from (the Gonzaga scrimmage) offensively and, especially, defensively,” Henry said. “We’ve got a feel for each other now. Obviously, Josh and Kyle (Ahrens) were playing then, and a lot of things have changed. It’s just a different energy we have now. We carry ourselves to a different standard. Just competing-wise, and the love we have for each other. You can see the way we share the ball now. It’s different than we did before. The ball is not as stagnant. We’re just having more fun on the court. We look more in sync.”

What they look like is a modern-day version of a transformed program. All the old tropes about Michigan State — the notion that it’s some caveman program reliant on wearing football pads for WAR drills and running the same offense Izzo has used since the Clinton administration — have been exhausted and debunked by this group in particular. From that game against Gonzaga to this Saturday’s matchup against Texas Tech, Michigan State has transformed into a team suddenly with a strong bend toward pro-style ball screens on the offensive end and the pliability to switch screens and adjust defensively. This team isn’t a boxer looking to throw the hardest punch. It’s a fighter knowing which jabs to dodge, which hooks to duck, and when to land the swings that matter.

“I feel like we can throw a bunch of different looks out there,” Henry said. “I feel like there’s more to it than just this is Michigan State basketball.”

That says everything.

When asked about the team that played in Minneapolis only five months ago, players waxed nostalgic like they were at a reunion. It was a reminder of what makes good teams great. It’s the ones that find themselves on the long road that figure out how to get where they’re going. You don’t realize how hard it is until you see it. In recollecting the scrimmage, young Foster Loyer, another freshman, looked up and said: “We hadn’t figured out who we were as a team. This team is so much different than we were then. We knew we could play with Gonzaga. We just had to figure out how.”

If there are any questions left as to how the Spartans found their way to the Final Four, the answer is now clear.

They figured out how to get back to Minneapolis.

(Photo: Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports)

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Brendan Quinn

Brendan Quinn covers college basketball and golf for The Athletic. He came to The Athletic from MLive Media Group, where he covered Michigan and Michigan State basketball. Prior to that, he covered Tennessee basketball for the Knoxville News Sentinel. Follow Brendan on Twitter @BFQuinn