Plenty of Motivation for Spartans, Heels

DETROIT -- Somewhere on the Road to the Final Four, which once it finally gets to this championship round is called The Road Ends Here, should have been some guys holding placards that read: "Hooping for a Cause."

They should've been wearing Michigan State green and North Carolina blue. They should've been Spartans and Tar Heels led by Tom Izzo and Roy Williams. They should've been the two teams that survived to Monday night's title game.

Most survivors to the championship game are motivated simply by the title of champion at the end of the journey. These two teams are as well.

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But the Spartans and Tar Heels are moved by something else, too. They are being fueled by other reasons, not unlike long distance runners who dedicate themselves to someone or some movement in need of support.

We know the Spartans want to succeed for their home state, harder hit by the national recession than any other.

"The state, this city is very important to me," Izzo said Sunday.

"The cause right now is for the Michigan State players to win a championship, and hopefully the repercussions from that will help a lot of people. It's a feel good for a lot of people."

Against any other team, that might be enough to even the basketball court for a young and sometimes undersized Michigan State team against a more veteran and more talented North Carolina team that dropped it by 35 points when they first met this season right here at Ford Field back in early December.

But North Carolina, as suggested, is not without a little extra motivation, too, that should help it maintain its edge in this tilt. The Tar Heels motivation isn't so communal. It is more personal. It stems from the senior class that didn't leave their coach and younger teammates in the lurch.

"I want this team to win for the character of this senior class, and what they've meant to Roy Williams," the coach said.



I've witnessed what seniors have meant to Williams. My earliest memory comes from the spring of 1997 in Birmingham, where top-ranked Kansas Jayhawks -- led by seniors Jacque Vaughn and Jerod Haase, and juniors Paul Pierce, Raef LaFrentz and Scot Pollard -- fell to Arizona. Williams said through blood-shot eyes that he told his seniors that the setback was proof that life wasn't fair and how horribly he felt for them. He suggested Sunday that the same feelings are welling up in him now.

"There's no question that the biggest sadness I will have is if this team loses, and it will be for those five kids," Williams said of his seniors, led by Tyler Hansbrough, on this Tar Heels' squad. "The biggest exhilaration ... will be if we win it for those five kids."

Monday night will be about reward. Izzo and his troops want to reward their home-state fans who are turning out in droves with a banner to warm them in the cold times that have descended upon them. Williams and his troops want to reward themselves for the sacrifice of NBA riches Hansbrough, Danny Green and Ty Lawson accepted for college immortality. Their reason is no less imagined than the Spartans.

"I almost made a dumb, dumb mistake," Williams said. "I guess it was, '99, 2000. I went home one night and told my wife, 'Maybe I've got to try that pro stuff.' I was so discouraged with recruiting that I just said, I just can't do this anymore.

"Then along came Nick Collison, Kirk Hinrich, Drew Gooden, three great kids, great players, great families, that showed us you could do it the right way. It was so much fun, it gave me hope. It lasted and it's still lasting."

That trio didn't win it all, either, despite two close calls, the last without Gooden. And that turned Williams into a weeping coach all over again.

"The second deal is this year's senior class," Williams explained of his coaching salvation. "After Sean [May] and Raymond [Felton] and Rashad [McCants] and Marvin [Williams] all left ... this year's senior class was the nucleus. Even though they were freshmen, they were fantastic every day in practice, I mean every day. I've loved them for that.

"I've loved them for Bobby [Fasor], the stress fracture condition on the foot, the ACL on the knee, how he's worked so hard and his shot's gone south. Yet you see him last [Saturday] night chase down five offensive rebounds. That character is extremely important to me.

"Tyler coming back, and passing up what people would say would be the money, because he loves college basketball. People say that's not the reason. That is the reason."

And did I mention that the Tar Heels have the highest mark in the NCAA's new academic rating systems of all the teams that were in the tournament? Good for them.

"The kid told me last year, when he made the decision to stay, 'I've been miserable for the last two weeks. I'm the happiest now than I've ever been in my life.' He wouldn't even walk out of the weight room to go up to the office to write out a statement [about his decision to comeback for his senior year]. He said, 'Coach, you just write something down and tell them I said it.' "

There are some coaches out there for whom the stage Williams and Izzo will be on Monday night is more about them than anyone else, their players included. That isn't true for Williams and Izzo, I don't think.

Williams and Izzo don't want to walk away the ultimate winner on Monday night for themselves. They want to do so for their young men who've given them so much and the people who enjoy watching those young men play. This is about as good as it can get for the increasing seedy game that is college basketball.