Flexing Through Pandemonium
When Michigan State’s high hopes led to its hardest fall under Tom Izzo
I found a novelty story the other day: three former Michigan State basketball players — Brandan Kearney, Russell Byrd, and Korie Lucious — were all playing together for the Moncton Miracles in New Brunswick, Canada. Not only did this remind me that MSU’s roster once boasted three different spellings of “Brandon”, it evoked the memory of a cherished game: the MSU/Maryland game in the second round of the 2010 NCAA tournament. The game’s action and aftermath display a cruel reality shared by sports and life, a rule universal to every game we follow: Promise stales swiftly.
If you remember the game at all, you’ll remember this: MSU won on a buzzer beater three from sophomore guard Korie Lucious. It was a frantic scene, Lucious pump-faking to the side, launching upwards and sticking the ball to the back of the rim, assisted by a very young and definitely-not-kicking-everyone’s-nuts Draymond Green.
Here’s what you might not recall: in the first half, the Spartans slowly and steadily built a solid lead thanks to junior Durrell Summers and senior Raymar Morgan, but disaster struck just before halftime when junior Kalin Lucas, the team’s star point guard, battling a sprained ankle, tore his Achilles tendon hitting what Verne Lundquist excitedly called a “beautiful teardrop” runner, forcing Lucious onto the stage.
Fans hailed fall 2010 as Peak Point Guard for MSU. Kalin Lucas and Korie Lucious were disciplined scorers who made plays for their teammates. Kalin, a leader from the moment he laced up in green, carried the scoring burden with poise when he had to. The leaner against Kansas in the 2009 Sweet Sixteen. The springy mid-range jumper to beat Michigan a year later. His body control was absolute. Lucas didn’t just make layups, he willed them around leaping defenders. Up in the air, the future was his and his alone.
Korie Lucious had been a key contributor all season, as good an understudy fans can hope for. But he’d never had to lead his team through the March Madness meat grinder. The Spartans’ energy waned late — Greivis Vasquez, Maryland’s All-American, dragged his team ahead near the very end, but Lucious and the Spartans held fast. Slicing o’er the key he came, leaping out of his six-foot frame, with one shot he kept our Sweet dreams alive. The team bowed out in Final Four, but it was more than enough to convince us fans that 2011 would be the year that coach/demigod Tom Izzo was going to win his second title.
When you strike up an old recorded game, you can feel the bend of space-time — the birth of each play and event, the conventional wisdom, the story of the moment. It’s almost intoxicating to roll around in the flourishing narratives. But, through the patina of life’s added years, you see the game in a new light.
This time, as the fans rushed the court, I couldn’t help but sigh.
All throughout, the stories felt dead on the vine. Lucas somehow bounced back to set career highs in scoring and minutes played as a senior, but the workload rose after Lucious and guard Chris Allen were kicked off for breaking team rules — Lucious for smoking weed. The team unraveled. Lucas was taxed all the more, and the burst he showed in previous years was gone. MSU was bounced from the 2011 tournament in one game, a season on life support finally, mercifully, cut off.
It didn’t get much sweeter from there. Kalin Lucas played one NBA game. Delvon Roe’s career was derailed by injuries. Durrell Summers passed up a possible draft selection only to sign with the Maine Lobsters a year later. Raymar Morgan never played in the NBA, although he’s carved a long career in Europe. Really, the only player who stuck in the Association is Draymond Green, the positionless talent whom even back then, as a raw sophomore, Izzo trusted enough to close out the game.
And of course, the only constant before and after all these young men have come and gone, there’s Coach Izzo, still haunting the sideline, beloved, magisterial and insane, still hunting that second ring. And we were saying that back in 2010. I doubt I’ll ever watch the full game again, but if I do, it won’t be until we have a conclusion to that story.
As we grow older, memories fade. Years blur, and sports moments join the infinity of buried memory.
But they’re still there, in our dormant neurons, kicking around our subconscious, tied together like they were back then in the eyes of one young sports fan: the twin guards Lucas and Lucious.
Kalin, the star, the heir apparent to Mateen, knifing through the air like Apollo himself, owning his future, unable to predict his fortune.
Korie, the standby, frozen in time at the peak of his three.
Kalin on the ground, season over.
Korie, skipping away, flexing through pandemonium, miles and miles from Moncton.
