The Edge: North Carolina-Michigan State | Predictions
DETROIT -- The problem with a fairy tale is that the facts get in the way. In the movie business, they get around that problem by banking on our willing suspension of disbelief. Thing is, college basketball isn't a movie. And it's definitely not a fairy tale.
So if you want to believe in the fairy tale of this Michigan State basketball team, by all means, believe to your little heart's content. Get good and gooey. But understand that you are disassociating yourself from reality. That you are lying to yourself, or letting the media lie to you. Or both.
Because Michigan State is not a team of destiny.
Michigan State is not easing Detroit's pain.
And Michigan State is not beating North Carolina.
• Bleacher Report: MSU bad for Detroit | Destiny's Choice
All three pieces are related, but if you're offended by the idea that any or all of those notions are make believe, don't fret. All over the Internet are people willing to peddle this soft-core tale of hope and belief, as if Detroit's misery is honestly being alleviated by a college basketball team.
A noted schlock purveyor in Detroit is all over this story, of course, but even two of the most cynical sportswriters in the business, two of my favorites, have decided that "this very much smells like destiny" and that "Detroit feels like paradise right now."
Really? Go ask the homeless how they feel about the Spartans. Go ask the out of work, the bankrupt, the people without two nickels to rub together. Go ask them about Durrell Summers' dunk Saturday night against UConn or about Raymar Morgan's broken nose or about Travis Walton's leadership skills. You won't find those people inside Ford Field, because tickets at the Final Four start at $275 and skyrocket steeply upward, and the people who can afford that ticket are not the same people we think of when we think of the economic misery engulfing our country generally and Detroit in particular.
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| Believe in Magic? Michigan State legend Earvin Johnson won't be able to help the Spartans on Monday vs. North Carolina. (Getty Images) |
And stop looking at me like that. Nobody likes a happy story more than I do. Well, OK, that's not completely true. Happy stories about fate and destiny give me the heebie-jeebies, but only because they're so rarely true. Sports stories, non-sports stories, all stories. Fate isn't a truth but a convenience, and right now it's convenient to say the Spartans reached the championship game in downtrodden Detroit in the middle of our country's economic meltdown because of ... fate.
No. It's because the Spartans are damn good. They were ranked in the top 10 most of the season and were given a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament. This isn't a fluke. This is the Spartans' fifth trip to the Final Four in 11 years. Calling this destiny only belittles Tom Izzo, who doesn't need stinkin' destiny to reach the Final Four. He just needs a handful of players who will play as hard as he's willing to coach. And he has that, again. And so here he is. Again.
But this is as far as he can go. Michigan State got here with strength and toughness and chemistry, but in North Carolina it will play a team with those three characteristics plus a lot more basketball talent. Go position by position. Which player on Michigan State would start for North Carolina over the current UNC starter? Not Kalin Lucas over Ty Lawson. Not Walton over Wayne Ellington or Delvon Roe over Danny Green. Not anyone over Tyler Hansbrough. Only at power forward could a Spartan like Morgan or Goran Suton possibly, maybe, start over UNC junior Deon Thompson. But that's it.
These teams played four months ago in this very same building, as you might have heard, and North Carolina won by 35. The margin was a fluke, but not the result.
But the fairy tales say this will be different.
Goran Suton didn't play in that first game, but he's healthy now! True. And largely irrelevant. When the Spartans lose, they lose because their perimeter is outplayed, specifically Lucas. In the team's six losses, the Big Ten Player of the Year has shot 33 percent from the floor, 25 percent on 3-pointers and had the same number of turnovers and assists (19). He's neither quicker nor stronger than Lawson. There aren't a lot of bad matchups for Lucas, but this is one of them.
Raymar Morgan is healthy and playing well again, too! Terrific. He was healthy and played great in the first meeting, too: 21 points, six rebounds, two blocked shots. And Michigan State lost by 35.
But Michigan State is playing at home! The Spartans have laid their biggest eggs at home. That loss to North Carolina was at Ford Field, of course, and they dropped home games to Penn State and Northwestern.
But this home game at sold-out Ford Field is different! Even you said so! Sad but true. Before the Michigan State-UConn game Saturday, I wrote: "This might just be the homiest home game in college basketball history." Then came the game and, yes, the crowd was huge. It was a Final Four record, 72,456 fans in all, most of them wearing green -- and they weren't as loud as the 9,314 that North Carolina has to deal with every year at Duke.
Difference between Ford Field and Cameron Indoor Stadium, or any regular-season place UNC visits, is the size. Ford Field is monstrous. The noise floats everywhere. Put it like this: CBSSports.com colleague Gary Parrish spent lots of the Michigan State-UConn game on his cell phone, tracking various coaching searches from courtside, and never once was the noise a problem. Try that at Cameron. Impossible. And UNC won there 101-87 this season.
Michigan State is better than Duke, but North Carolina is better than everyone. Even Izzo knows it, saying (and meaning), "If we play good and they play good, we'll lose."
But play they must, and since they'll play on a court and not on a piece of paper, anything can happen. Michigan State could win. That's true. But don't think for a second that a Michigan State victory will warm the body of the thousands of homeless in Detroit, or feed anyone's hunger, or truly comfort anyone wondering how they will pay next week's bills. This is a game, and that's an insult to true suffering.
Besides, fairy tales have a short shelf life. Next week, we've got the Easter Bunny.
