Grinz On Green: Spartans Celebrate A Championship

March 13, 2016

By Steve Grinczel, MSUSpartans.com Online Columnist

Denzel Valentine reached another, but he hopes not the last, milepost in his illustrious basketball career really without ever straying very far from where it all began.

His Michigan State Spartans had just watched their 13-point second-half lead get ground down to one, 62-61, by Purdue in a span of 13 minutes of Sunday's Big Ten Tournament championship game, and momentum was on the verge of shifting completely in favor of the Boilermakers, whose vocal fans filled a majority of the seats in Bankers Life Fieldhouse.

But after rebounding a missed Purdue layup with 2:04 remaining, Valentine drove the ball down the court and worked his way open for a good look just inside the 3-point line. However, as he rose to take the shot, Boilermaker guard Rapheal Davis, the 2015 Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year and member of the conference's 2016 all-defensive team, closed in.

Valentine adjusted accordingly, holding the ball on the way down until the last possible instant before getting off yet another impossible shot, like so many of his that have become the norm rather than the exception.

The basket gave No. 2-ranked MSU a three-point cushion with 1:26 remaining, and the Spartans held on the rest of the way for a 66-62 victory for their fifth tourney crown to tie Ohio State for the most since the event launched in 1998.

Valentine's score also spoke to the vision all great leaders share, this one with humble origins in the backyard of his family home in Lansing with an imaginary play-by-play announcer dramatically describing the action in his head.

"When I'm dribbling down the court, I'm just thinking of being in the driveway when I was little," Valentine said. "This moment is what I've been picturing all my life. I know you may think I'm crazy, but that's what I'm thinking about â€" making those big-time shots in the driveway.

"I live for those moments. On that play particularly, I came off the screen and snaked it. I did a little step-back and got some separation, but Rapheal Davis is a good defender; he didn't quit on it. So he came and almost blocked my shot. I pump-faked it a little bit and then just followed through and made the shot."

It was the clutch basket that had eluded Valentine in the waning seconds of one-point losses against Wisconsin and Nebraska and at the end of regulation in the 82-81 overtime defeat at Purdue during the regular season.

And, it helped clinch a meaningful championship for a player who constantly reminds anyone who'll listen that his Spartans haven't won anything.

Yet.

Oh, Michigan State captured the league crown when Valentine and fellow seniors Matt Costello and Colby Wollenman were sophomores in 2014 â€" Bryn Forbes, by the way, was still playing for Cleveland State â€" but that was Adreian Payne and Keith Appling's team. The Spartans made it to last season's NCAA Final Four, but lost in the national semifinal to Duke.

However, while this championship may prompt Coach Tom Izzo to lobby for raising tournament banners along with those hanging in the Breslin Center from finishing the regular season in first place 13 times (most recently in 2012), it still isn't what Valentine had in mind when he was hitting those game-winners back home.

"I've been anxious for the postseason this whole time," said Valentine, who finished with 15 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists and was named Most Outstanding Player of the tournament. "It feels good to finally win something for once and cutting down those nets felt good.

"But you know what? When the buzzer went off it felt good but I'm like, and I'm not trying to sound bad on this, but I already did this before. I want something bigger. No disrespect, and I'm grateful for this because this shows we can put something together and win something and this is definitely a mark in my career that's going to add to my and our seniors' legacy.

"But the national championship is where we want to be and where we saw ourselves as soon as the season got over last year."

Despite doing everything it could to earn what many so-called bracketology experts thought would be a No. 1 seed, Michigan State will begin the NCAA Tournament as the second seed in the Midwest Regional. The Spartans open against No. 15 Middle Tennessee in St. Louis on Friday afternoon and if victorious, will face the Dayton-Syracuse winner on Sunday.

Having gotten to within two wins of the national championship last season as a 7-seed, the Spartans weren't nearly as dismayed with their placement â€" if they get out of the first weekend they'll play in the Sweet 16 in fan-friendly Chicago â€" as many of their followers.

"If you want to say it puts a chip on our shoulder, go ahead and say it," Valentine said in passive agreement. "We can only control what we can control."

Izzo was even less dismayed the decision rendered by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee, whose vice chairman is MSU athletic director Mark Hollis.

"I really don't care," Izzo said. "If you're a one you're going to have to play a two if we all advance (to the regional final), and if you're a two you're going to have to play a one. And how many times does it come down to that anyway? It's usually somebody else."

Izzo, who has had a hot-and-cold opinion of the Big Ten Tournament depending on what it meant to a particular Spartan team any given year, put a higher value on the trophy that accompanied MSU home than the seeding this time.

"I felt like winning the Big Ten was an accomplishment this year," Izzo said. "We hurt ourselves early in the year. We put ourselves out of the Big Ten race so we saved face a little bit.

"You know, I don't think I'll look at (the 2-seed) it as a chip on my shoulder. I really don't. I've been through so many things. It will be fun to listen to my A.D. on how everything went down. I don't look at it as disrespect. There's got to be a reason for it."

The seed really won't matter if MSU really is still building toward its peak, as many believe it is. The Spartans likely won't face two bigger, or more physical, teams than Purdue and Maryland, which they beat 64-61 in Saturday's semi, in the NCAA tourney.

And against the Boilermakers, all 12 players who saw the floor made a timely contribution.

"They all came through," Izzo said. "We utilized a lot of guys. It was the ultimate team win. This was the battle cry of the seniors since last April, really, when we lost to (Duke) in this great city."

Wollenman, a former walk-on, made a rare aggressive move to the basket for a nifty up-and-under layup in the first half and he helped stem a Purdue charge with his tip-dunk of Costello's missed 3-point try with five minutes left.

With his second blocked shot of the game, and the 143rd of his career, Costello became MSU's all-time block leader, but his fourth atoned for missing the front end of a one-and-one with 19 seconds left and prevented Purdue from tying the score 11 seconds later.

The Spartans made eight 3-point field goals to establish a new single-season school record with 310, and counting, and although no other Spartan reached double figures, Forbes augmented his nine-point performance with scrappy defense. Marvin Clark Jr. and Alvin Ellis III pitched in a couple of key threes and Gavin Schilling and Deyonta Davis duked it out down low with Boilermaker twin 7-footers A.J. Hammons, who with 11 points fell four short of his team-leading average, and Isaac Haas.

"We talk about legacy all the time, put your footprint in the sand," Costello said. "We've done it a couple of times this year with some records we've broken, but right now we're just trying to win another championship. Happy we won today, but we've got bigger fish to fry."

Just as Valentine foretold while winning national championships in the driveway while his father Carlton, who played for MSU from 1984-88, occasionally looked on.

"I'm really happy for Denzel and Matt," Izzo said. "They've been here four years and this meant a lot to them. And Denzel, that's all he talks about. He's kind of like me…, he just wants to win championships. With his dad playing (for Michigan State) I just think he looks at this as I'm helping my dad live through me.

"What a cool thing that is."