ESPN Men's Basketball

TAMPA, Fla. -- Almost mercifully, Michigan State’s season-to-forget came to an end Thursday night.

The 10th-seeded Spartans, who were ranked No. 2 in the preseason polls but needed a late-season push just to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, fell to No. 7 seed UCLA 78-76 in a second-round game of the Southeast Regional at St. Pete Times Forum.

Even after finishing the season with a disappointing 19-15 record, the Spartans did the only thing coach Tom Izzo could ask them to do -- they fought to the very end.

After trailing by 23 points with about 8 ½ minutes to go, Michigan State cut UCLA’s lead to 78-76 and had the basketball with 4.4 seconds to go. But senior guard Kalin Lucas was called for traveling while trying to dribble through a triple-team down the sideline, and the Spartans’ improbable comeback was over.

“I’m crushed and disappointed because we just got off to such a poor start, and yet I’m so proud of these guys,” Izzo said. “They’ve been knocked down so many times this year. I don’t think I’ve ever had a team that’s gone through as much, and yet to battle back and almost put themselves at a chance to win was incredible. I’m incredibly grateful to them.”

In the end, though, the Spartans were never able to live up their lofty preseason hype against one of the country’s most difficult schedules.

MSU lost eight of its first 20 games and was plagued by off-court distractions. Guard Chris Allen was dismissed from the team in May and transferred to Iowa State. On Jan. 26, Izzo kicked guard Korie Lucious off the team for an unspecified violation of team rules.

Izzo even ran into his own troubles with the NCAA and was suspended for one game for committing a secondary rules violation.

“It’s been a year that I’ll never forget for a lot of reasons,” Izzo said. “It’s kind of a fitting way to end, because I’ve been telling these guys all year, we’ve just got to keep battling back. Where some people have just fallen off the face of the earth with one of these seasons, we didn’t. I kept telling them we’ve got to be like a boxer and just keep getting up.”

Even a heavyweight like Michigan State endures seasons like this one. The Spartans’ 15 losses are their most in a season since a 16-16 finish in 1995-96, Izzo’s first campaign. The losses also equaled Michigan State's total from their previous two seasons combined.

Izzo said he hurt most for seniors such as Lucas, Durrell Summers and Mike Kebler. After MSU played in the Final Four in each of the previous two seasons, it went one-and-done in their final college season.

Lucas fought back tears while addressing reporters in MSU’s postgame news conference.

“I think I had a great four years here,” Lucas said. “I had a great coach that pushed me every day at practice, and I had great teammates that pushed me every day at practice as well. The loss hurts, but at the same time these four years have been great.”

Lucas, the team’s leading scorer, battled back after rupturing his Achilles’ tendon in the NCAA tournament last season.

UCLA focused much of its defensive attention on Lucas, and he missed his first eight shots. He finished with 11 points on 4-for-14 shooting and had five assists and four turnovers.

“I know it had to be rough for him,” MSU forward Draymond Green said. “I feel like he had a great career, and he hasn’t had many games where he just couldn’t get anything to fall. They did a great job defensively on him. They pretty much keyed on him the whole entire defense, and he did a great job of still getting everybody else involved.”

Lucas finished four points shy of reaching 2,000 points in his career.

“It hurts me,” Green said. “I’m a big fan of my guys reaching milestones, and the loss hurts me, but I think I’m kind of hurting because he came up four points short of 2,000. For everything he did for this program, I get to come back for another year so I can be sad about the loss later. I think I’m hurting more about him not getting them four points.”

Izzo said he won’t remember these seniors by their final campaign. They were part of teams that reached the Sweet 16 in 2008, the national championship game in 2009 and the national semifinals last season.

“I’m proud of all those seniors,” Izzo said. “I hope people look at what they’ve accomplished in their four-year career because it is unbelievable how many games they won and crowds they played in front of and what they’ve done.”

TAMPA, Fla. -- In the type of thriller that is responsible for the term March Madness, UCLA nearly blew a 23-point second-half lead, but held off a fury of Michigan State 3-pointers and won, 78-76, in a second round NCAA tournament game at the St. Pete Times forum.

No. 7-seeded UCLA (23-10) had an 18-point halftime lead and stretched it to 64-41 with 8:35 to play, but Michigan State got hot from the outside and made six 3-point baskets in the final 6:13. Meanwhile, UCLA had troubles from the free-throw line, making only 3 of 12 foul shots in the final 1:31 as the No. 10-seeded Spartans closed a 75-66 deficit to 77-76 with 4.4 seconds to play.

UCLA guard Malcolm Lee made one of two free throws then forced a turnover on the ensuing possession and UCLA advanced.

Turning point: It might not have seemed all that relevant given how close the game ended up, but Joshua Smith's hook shot with 8:56 remaining gave UCLA an 11-point lead. The Bruins have not lost a game this season when taking a double-digit lead at any point. They are now 21-0 in such games.

Player of the game: Tyler Honeycutt, UCLA. He played one of his most complete games of the season with 16 points, six rebounds, five assists and three blocked shots. Perhaps Honeycutt was motivated by some pregame comments made by Michigan State's Durrell Summers. His huge rebound on a missed Spartans 3-pointer with 14 seconds remaining and UCLA up 77-73 all but clinched the game. Michigan State's Draymond Green also deserves mention for a triple-double of 23 points, 11 rebounds and 1o assists in the losing effort.

Key stat: Kalin Lucas, Michigan State's leading scorer for the season had only 11 points on 4-for-14 shooting. Lucas was averaging 17.2 points this season and 20 points over the past 14 games, but was held scoreless until there was 7:44 left in the game. He was the Big Ten player of the year in 2009 and a key contributor to the Spartans' Final Four runs in each of the past two seasons, but was a non-factor for much of Thursday thanks to the tenacious defense played on him by Lee, a Pac-10 all-defensive team selection.

Miscellaneous: The battle of the boards was always going to be a deciding factor in this game and UCLA's 39-36 edge on the glass certainly was. Michigan State had outrebounded opponents by an average of 35-30 over the season and UCLA held a 37-32 average rebounding edge this season.

What’s next: UCLA will face No. 2-seeded Florida on Saturday in a rematch of the 2006 national championship and '07 national semifinal games. Florida, a 79-52 winner over UC Santa Barbara, won both those games and won consecutive NCAA championships. This time a spot in the Sweet 16 is on the line. Game time is approximately 11:45 a.m. Pacific.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Tom Izzo sent in a sub for Durrell Summers with 15 minutes, 21 seconds left in the game Thursday. When Summers reached the Michigan State sideline, he looked longingly for a chair at the end of the bench.

No vacancy. He was going to have to take the only open seat -- right next to his exasperated head coach.

The two had done this dance too many times throughout this miserable season. Summers would play poorly. Izzo would bench him. He’d admonish, instruct, cajole, yell, plead … anything to get through to his talented senior guard.

Nothing much seemed to work. A guy who made big contributions on back-to-back Final Four teams floundered through the second half of the season, mirroring the Spartans’ profound struggles.

That continued in Conseco Fieldhouse on Thursday against Iowa in a do-or-die Big Ten tournament game for the Spartans. A loss would doom their NCAA tourney chances. A win would keep them alive -- maybe even cement the bid.

Michigan State led 40-39 when Izzo yanked Summers for getting his third foul. At that point Summers had zero points, one rebound, no assists, no steals, four missed shots and three turnovers to his credit.

But Izzo won’t give up on his upperclassmen. So after his 957th attempt to reach Summers there on the bench, he sent him back in with 12:40 left to play.

The transformation was not immediate, but it was emphatic. By game’s end, Summers was one of the heroes of a 66-61 Michigan State triumph.

Draymond Green had the big numbers: 21 points, 14 rebounds and four assists. Kalin Lucas chipped in 11 points and four assists. Keith Appling had 10. But nobody contributed more timely points than Summers.

He scored the Spartans’ final seven points -- a huge 3-pointer and four icy free throws. On the 3, he was wide open but hesitated for a moment before letting it fly from in front of the Michigan State bench with the Spartans clinging to a one-point lead.

“Guys were yelling from the bench, ‘Shoot it! Shoot it!,’“ Summers said.

He shot it. He swished it. It proved to be the winning points.

Summers also had a steal and a skywalking defensive rebound in the final 25 seconds. He finished with nine points, three boards, two steals and an immeasurable sense of relief.

“It was great,” teammate Delvon Roe said of seeing Summers step up in crunch time. “I was talking to Durrell the whole game. I kept telling him, ‘You’re good. You’re good.’“

Amazing that a guy who scored 21 big-time points in the regional final last year against Tennessee needed that kind of reassurance, but Summers did. In an eight-game stretch from Feb. 2 through March 2, he averaged fewer than six points and made just 6 of 29 3-point shots.

“There are no secrets that it’s been a disappointing year for him and a disappointing year for us,” Izzo said. “And I thought he struggled during the game, just fumbling the ball and doing some things. It all means he’s pressing. Sometimes if you just do a couple things to feel good about yourself, you can get over that. …

“That last shot was big. But I’m not kidding you, the rebounds were just about as big. … Hopefully it motivates him because if his buddy [Kalin Lucas] is able to go [Friday against Purdue], it probably won’t be at full speed, and we’re going to need some more bodies.”

Ah, yes, Lucas. The injury-plagued guard rolled his right ankle during the second half -- the same ankle he injured against Purdue a couple of weeks ago. Last year in the NCAA tournament he tore an Achilles tendon. It’s been a tough slog for Lucas this season, too.

He sat in the Spartans locker room afterward with an ice bag on his right ankle and vowed to play against the Boilermakers, even though he could barely get around the court for the final 13 minutes against Iowa. A few feet away, Roe had ice on his chronically inflamed right knee but vowed he’d be ready to take on Purdue big man JaJuan Johnson.

“I feel good,” Roe said, because the kid is hard-wired to be tough and never complain.

Make no mistake, Michigan State is hurting heading into a matchup with a top-10 team that has beaten it twice already this season. The odds are long -- but no team seems to respond to the pressure of tournament play like the Spartans.

“It’s March time,” Lucas said. “March time is one-and-done time. We know if we lose the next game we’re going home, and we don’t want to go home.”

Durrell Summers, of all unlikely suspects, kept the Spartans from going home Thursday. They’ll need him even more Friday.

INDIANAPOLIS -- With its NCAA tournament bid hanging in the balance, Michigan State rallied from a seven-point deficit midway through the second half and then held on in the final minutes to beat Iowa 66-61.The Spartans overcame a second-half right leg injury that limited guard Kalin Lucas and made just enough plays to eke out a victory over the 11-20 Hawkeyes.

Turning point: Down 52-45, State got some key stops and scored on five straight possessions to take a 55-54 lead. The Spartans never again relinquished the lead, although it got down to a single point in the final 90 seconds.

Key player: Durrell Summers. The senior guard has had a horrible season, but he scored the Spartans' final seven points to pull them through.

Key stat: Facing at-large bid elimination, Michigan State reverted to an old staple to pull this one out. It hit the glass. Michigan State outrebounded the Hawkeyes by eight, led by Draymond Green's 14 total rebounds and six on the offensive glass.

Miscellaneous: All-Big Ten freshman Melsahn Basabe was benched by Iowa coach Fran McCaffery for the final minutes after some poor possessions in which he turned over the ball on a somewhat selfish offensive move and failed to hustle back defensively.

What’s next: Michigan State will face Purdue on Friday in a game that would seemingly cinch a bid. Iowa's season is over.

Durrell Summers' decision to return for his senior year following a breakout NCAA tournament was a major national storyline heading into the season. The Michigan State guard could have been a first-round NBA draft pick, yet chose to come back in order to graduate and make another run at the national championship.

And now it comes out that Summers was benched during Saturday's overtime win against Northwestern because he "wasn't very enthused"?

That's what Spartans coach Tom Izzo had to say about Summers yesterday in explaining why his second-leading scorer didn't play in the final minutes of regulation and the entire overtime period.

From the Grand Rapids Press:

"Durrell was not feeling like he was doing anything right," Izzo said. "And I don't know if he didn't want to go in, but he sure wasn't very enthused. And so, if he's not enthused, he's going to sit. If he's not enthused the next game, he's going to sit. If he's not enthused the game after, he's going to sit. If he is enthused, he's going to play. Pretty simple."

Summers was benched for much of the second half of last year's Big Ten tournament first-round loss to Minnesota -- a game in which ex-Spartan Chris Allen already was in street clothes, as a one-game disciplinary measure -- for lack of defensive effort.

Izzo said he believes Saturday's blip was just that, a temporary issue for a veteran who is upset about shooting too poorly and infrequently.

Izzo said the benching was not due the apparent lack of effort that caused last year's benching. The last time Summers sat, it seemed to do him long-term good.

But when inconsistent play leads to bad body language for a senior standout, it's quite simply not a great sign, especially for a team that entered the season with so much promise.

EVANSTON, Ill. -- Northwestern's student section T-shirt slogan -- "Make Shots" -- isn't just dry-witted and cliché-free. It's also pretty solid basketball advice.

Fitting, then, that these Northwestern Wildcats have to follow it so closely. When John Shurna and company aren't draining 3-pointers from all angles -- when Shurna makes only one shot, singular -- they're going to struggle to score points against athletically superior teams.

Michigan State is one such team, and so it went at Welsh-Ryan Arena on Monday night. Northwestern -- one of the nation's best outside shooting teams with perhaps its best pure shooter in Shurna -- shot 31 percent (18-of-57 from the field) at home in a resilient, but disappointing, 65-62 loss to the Spartans.

"We've just got to be able to move on from this," NU forward Drew Crawford said. "We're going to learn from it, learn how to run our offense more precisely. ... We're going to practice hard tomorrow and get ready for the rest of the Big Ten season."

That's probably the right attitude to take, but Northwestern has to consider this something of a disappointment, because there is good news and bad news baked into the loss.

The good news is that the Wildcats hung tough, came back from a 13-point deficit with 3:51 remaining in the second half, and nearly forced overtime before a bad inbound play doomed Crawford's last-ditch 3-point attempt. Juice Thompson, who had been quiet for much of the night, came alive in the final minutes and almost singlehandedly led his team to an unlikely comeback.

"Juice put us on his back and willed us back into the game," Crawford said.

More good news: Northwestern had a chance to win despite its best player -- a guy averaging 61.8 percent from 3 this season -- struggling through an ankle injury that robbed him of his ability to find open shots in Bill Carmody's tricky Princeton offense. For a team that has relied so much on outside shooting thus far, that counts as something of a moral victory.

Shurna's release is lightning-quick, but his feet, even when 100 percent healthy, are not. And his margin of error is a smaller when playing against athletic defenders like Michigan State's. Shurna never really found good looks -- his one made 3-pointer was the product of a leaning and-one foul on Michigan State guard Kalin Lucas -- and his production (11 points, 8-for-11 from the stripe) came entirely at the free throw line.

The bad news for Northwestern? The late heroics didn't produce a win. And what the Wildcats need right now is wins.

The calculus isn't difficult to figure out: Northwestern's NCAA tournament chances grow dimmer with every conference loss. As of Monday morning, ESPN.com bracketologist Joe Lunardi listed Northwestern as one of his first four teams to miss the tournament. Thanks to a nonconference schedule loaded with cupcakes and short on quality opponents (with the possible exception of St. John's), Northwestern can't afford to have a so-so conference season. It needs to handle its business against the Iowas and Indianas of the world, but it also needs to compile more than a few quality wins against the Purdues and Michigan States, too.

In other words, Monday night was a missed opportunity. With a trip to Illinois next on the docket, the Wildcats are in serious danger of beginning the Big Ten season 0-3. That's not the stuff mold-breaking NCAA tournament bids are made of.

"This is a very good team," Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. "I know I say this every year, and it sounds like I'm being hard on Bill, but ... Shurna's not 100 percent. "I watched him move earlier in the year and I watched him move the last two games and I don't think he's quite there, and they need him. He's their best player."

Shurna's bum ankle was especially noticeable on the biggest play of the game, when forward Draymond Green rebounded a missed Lucas free throw over Shurna with :12 seconds remaining in the second half. Green scored an easy layup on the play, gave Michigan State a three-point lead, and forced Northwestern into desperation 3-pointers on its last two possessions.

Green was again the star for Michigan State, a team that seems to be slowly but surely figuring things out. Izzo said his lineups are still in flux, and that he should have called timeouts down the stretch to help his players avoid the late letdown, but that he was otherwise happy with his team's performance.

"I think it will be one of those years for us where nothing is going to be easy," Izzo said. "We just got a little out of whack and I think I'm the one that needs to be blamed for that."

Izzo wouldn't take the blame for Michigan State's biggest ongoing issue, which is the Spartans' seeming inability to keep itself from turning the ball over. Michigan State had another plus-20 percent turnover rate performance Monday night; the Spartans turned the ball over 14 times, including on four key plays during Northwestern's late run.

"That's the problem right now," Izzo said. "I don't have an answer for you on that."

Still, despite the late flurry, Green's all-around play, mixed with some smart shooting, some especially impressive perimeter defense, and a one-make night from the hobbled Shurna propelled Michigan State to the win.

Whether the NCAA tournament selection committee eventually takes Shurna's injury into consideration is now in Northwestern's hands, because to receive NCAA tournament consideration, the Wildcats need to win games against teams better than Northern Illinois and Georgia Tech. And to win games, they need to make shots. It all sounds so simple, doesn't it?

Our own Andy Katz will have a full recap later tonight, but in the meantime here are some quick thoughts on Syracuse’s 72-58 win over Michigan State.

• Syracuse’s famed zone is as good as ever. This is no surprise -- you can’t spell “Syracuse” without “2-3 zone.” (OK, so you can, but just go with it.) And this zone isn’t a sit-back-and-force-bad-shots type of 2-3, though it does have that effect. The Orange zone extends, pressures shooters, forces turnovers and slides seamlessly from one end of the court to the other. Michigan State was able to find gaps here and there, but more often than not (and especially in the first half), the Spartans were stuck tossing the ball around on the perimeter, trying and failing to get Draymond Green a touch at the top of the key. And when Michigan State did break down the zone, Syracuse’s lengthy interior defenders were there to erase the opportunity. A thoroughly impressive defensive effort.

• In the meantime, Michigan State becomes the best -- and most maddening -- 6-3 team in the country. If this was any other team, you’d ask for someone to kindly show you where the beef is. (If only there were a catchier way of asking that question.) But MSU’s losses have come against very good teams. All of them have come in either neutral or hostile environments. And the Spartans have flashed plenty of Final Four potential in each. The problem, as always: turnovers. MSU gave the ball away 16 times on Tuesday night, which is in character, given that Michigan State entered the game as one of the worst teams in the country in turnover percentage. At some point, this group is going to have to learn how to take care of the ball. If it doesn't, we’ll still be here in February talking about how good the Spartans look, and how they’ll figure it out come March, and how much better they'd be if they could just keep control of the ball. Cross file that one under “Tom Izzo” and “nightmare scenario.” In other words: The time to stop turning the ball over is now.

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  Speaking of which, did you see Izzo’s face on the bench as the final seconds ticked away? Cross file that one under “locker room speeches” and “glad I won’t be there.”

• Syracuse is not a 3-point shooting team, and knows it. The Orange attempted a mere 11 3s and made only two of them. This team is at its best when attacking the rim, and they were at their best Tuesday night. Rick Jackson opened the game with a dunk-fest, and Syracuse was able to get to the rim in multiple hyphenated ways -- post-ups, curl-screens, dribble-drives, dump-offs, all of it. The Cuse will have to make some shots eventually -- there are good shooters on this team -- but until that day, they seem to have the whole “get easy looks” thing down pat.

• Most impressive for Syracuse? Jackson, of course: 17 points, 16 rebounds, six of which came on the offensive end. That’s an obvious one. But Scoop Jardine, who got his 19 points on an efficient 7-of-9 shooting, wasn’t too bad either.

• Most impressive for Michigan State? Durrell Summers scored 18 points and grabbed six rebounds, though he was characteristically off-and-on from beyond the arc. And though he only scored 6 points, Draymond Green continued his impressive streak of versatile play with an 11-rebound, five-assist, three-steal night.

• Oh, and Kalin Lucas still doesn’t look 100 percent. Whether the Achilles is still sore, or Lucas is still just rusty from the lost offseason, he’s clearly missing his touch and, like the rest of his team, is struggling to hold onto the ball (Lucas had six turnovers Tuesday).

• I think we’re officially past the physical feeling-out point of the year for both players and referees. This game was physical, but never overly so. The refs let both teams play, but never let the game turn into a slugfest. There were questionable calls here and there -- aren’t there always? -- but in general, it was great to see an officiating crew let the game unfold with a good sense of where the line eventually had to be drawn.

• At this point in his career, the best description for Korie Lucious is “shotmaker.” Lucious is still a little too turnover-prone to be truly efficient, but his ability to break down defenders and hit shots from everywhere -- whether a set shot from behind the arc or slightly fading from 15 feet -- has kept the Spartans in more than one game this season.

• Did we mention that Michigan State needs to stop turning the ball over? Have we talked about this enough already? Because, yeah, wow. Michigan State really needs to stop turning the ball over. Basketball is a mysterious fig, but sometimes it’s pretty simple. This is one of those times.

Saddle Up is our daily preview of the night's best basketball action. Tonight's installment focuses primarily on the Jimmy V Classic. Why? Because look at these games! That's why.

No. 14 Memphis vs. No. 4 Kansas, 7 p.m. ET, ESPN: Who are the Memphis Tigers? The truth is, even after seven wins in seven games, we still don't know.

That has a lot to do with Memphis' nonconference schedule to this point. The Tigers have played only two teams with a shot at making the NCAA tournament thus far (Miami and Western Kentucky, both at home) and while they handled both opponents with relative ease, they've also struggled at times, especially in a narrow overtime win over Arkansas State last week. Tonight's matchup with Kansas will be, without question, Memphis' first entreé into the realm of the elite, and thanks to a paltry schedule, we have few indicators as to how Josh Pastner's team will perform against top competition. Is this a team destined to win a conference title and little more? Or can this team reach for the Final Four?

It's not just schedule, though. Our questions about the Tigers also have to do with personnel. Pastner's team is heavy on freshmen, which is a little like saying the ocean is heavy on water. The wunderkind coach snared a top-four recruiting class in 2010, and those first-year players have wasted no time claiming the majority of Memphis' offensive responsibilities. Four of the Tigers' five biggest contributors on a per-possession basis are freshmen: Joe Jackson, Will Barton, Chris Crawford and Tarik Black all average between 28.1 and 20.0 percent in usage rate. Jackson, who owns that 28.1 percent, has especially dominated the ball.

Those freshmen have been effective, but on an inconsistent basis. In fact, the most efficient offensive player on the team has been junior Wesley Witherspoon, who has combined an impressive ability to get to the line -- Witherspoon shoots free throws more often than any other player in the country -- with highly accurate shooting from the field.

What does all this mean? It means a team dominated by freshmen should think about getting its junior forward involved as often as possible. That could stand as a general rule, but it makes extra sense tonight (in so far as something can make "extra sense," I guess). Memphis is forced to make up for its lack of interior size and experience with athleticism on the wing. That won't change against Kansas, which has a handful of viable forwards (Marcus and Markieff Morris, Thomas Robinson, Jeff Withey) who excel on the defensive glass but are sporadically foul-prone. To have a chance against a team like KU, the Tigers have to do what they do best on offense: get to the free throw line.

Meanwhile, Memphis' biggest task on defense will be finding someone to deal with the aforementioned Morii. The Morris twins are almost perfectly complementary: Marcus is the elite stretch-post scorer, Markieff the standout rebounder, particularly on the defensive end. Until Josh Selby finishes his NCAA-mandated suspension, KU's forwards will continue to key the team's success on both ends of the floor. That's been going well so far -- Kansas is No. 1 in Ken Pomeroy's overall adjusted efficiency ranking, after all -- but as UCLA showed us Thursday, the Jayhawks are far from complete, and far from invincible.

Still, they'll be by far the biggest challenge these Memphis freshmen have faced so far. So how good are they? How good are the Memphis Tigers? We're about to get a pretty good idea.

(For more on Memphis and Kansas, read Dana O'Neil's preview here.)

No. 8 Michigan State vs. No. 7 Syracuse, 9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN: Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present reason No. 5,498 that rankings don't matter.

Syracuse is ranked a spot higher than Michigan State in the latest coaches' poll, but few would consider Syracuse the better team right now, or the better prospect to make the Final Four by the end of the season. Michigan State's diminished ranking is due to two losses -- vs. the Connecticut Kemba Walkers in Maui, and at Duke last Wednesday night -- that hardly indict the Spartans as pretenders. Meanwhile, Syracuse is undefeated at 8-0, but six of those wins came at home, and at least four of them came after nail-biting affairs with so-so teams like William & Mary (63-60), Michigan (53-50), Georgia Tech (80-76), and NC State (65-59). There might not be a tourney team in that bunch. It's not exactly the most glittering résumé.

What's wrong with Syracuse? Why hasn't Jim Boeheim's team been blowing opponents out? Start with shooting: Syracuse is averaging 29.7 percent from 3, 49.8 percent from 2, and 63.0 percent from the foul line. Absent anyone with consistent outside shooting ability -- Andy Rautins and Wesley Johnson are not walking through that door -- the Orange have been getting by on a steady diet of offensive rebounds and low-turnover hoops. And, of course, Boeheim's fabled 2-3 zone. The zone is working yet again; Syracuse almost never fouls opposing shooters -- it ranks No. 5 in opponent free throw rate -- and the Orange have contained outside shooting and forced enough turnovers to squeak by against mediocre competition.

Michigan State, as you might have heard, is not mediocre. The Spartans are already quite good at pretty much -- key phrase there -- everything. They shoot the ball well, both from beyond the arc (41.7 percent) and inside it (52.3 percent). They stifle opposing scorers. They clean up on the glass, especially on defense. Draymond Green is as versatile and effective as big men get. Kalin Lucas has already showed plenty of his pre-Achilles tear self. Durrell Summers can be an unstoppable scorer. The Spartans' front court is deep and physical. Korie Lucious might be the best reserve point guard in the country. (Given his usage rate, Lucious barely qualifies as a reserve.) The list goes on and on.

The only thing holding Michigan State back? (Here's where that "pretty much" rears its ugly head.) Turnovers. The Spartans are one of the worst teams in the country at wasting possessions with turnovers. Izzo's team turns the ball over on 25.8 percent of its possessions, ranking it No. 325 in the stat; the only major-conference teams giving the ball away more frequently are Baylor and Florida State.

That sounds bad enough on paper, but it was evident in action Wednesday night at Duke. Michigan State turned the ball over 20 times on the road against the best team in the country, and somehow still had a chance to win. Turnovers have been a recurring blight on Izzo's otherwise brilliantly coached teams in recent years, and if Michigan State wants to accomplish its goals -- this year, that means national title or bust -- it has to find a way to cut down on giveaways.

How does this play out tonight? If recent trends hold, Michigan State should take, and make, a lot of 3-pointers. It will stifle Syracuse's sputtering scorers from the outside-in. And the game will be close, because the Spartans will give the ball away far too often.

Both teams need to break the cycle of self-defeating tendencies. What better time than now?

(For more on Michigan State and Syracuse, read Andy Katz's preview here.)

INDIANAPOLIS -- Butler is going to the NCAA tournament final. Read that sentence again. Still, 10 minutes after Gordon Hayward walked off the Lucas Oil court with a big wave and an even bigger smile to the Butler fans, it still barely seems plausible. But it happened. And here's how:

HOW THE GAME WAS WON: Butler's style prevailed. Again. The Bulldogs have had a simple formula for winning games in this NCAA tournament -- slow the game down, force teams to make shots over you, prevent penetration with help, get defensive rebounds, force turnovers, grind out a win. It worked against Syracuse. It worked against Kansas State. And it worked against Michigan State.

The Spartans kept turnovers at a minimum for much of the first half, but that didn't last in the second -- the Spartans committed 16 total turnovers -- and once Michigan State stopped hitting outside shots, the game began to fit the exact archetype Butler has thrived on all tournament long. From the 9:24 to the 3:46 marks in the second half, both teams combined for four points. Butler went more than 10 minutes without a field goal. Michigan State had their chances. Despite all that offensive impotence, the late opportunities were there. The Spartans just couldn't convert. And so they became the fifth team to score fewer than 60 points in an NCAA tournament game against Butler this year and the fifth team to fall by the wayside in Butler's magical run to the final game on Monday night. Amazing.

TURNING POINT: Butler looked shaky. The Bulldogs couldn't get anything to fall. Hayward had cooled off. And star guard Shelvin Mack was suffering from cramps in his hamstrings that kept him on the sideline throughout. It was 48-46, and the Spartans were coming; at this point, all that momentum, all that grind-it-out brilliance, looked ready to evaporate with a few unfortunate possessions.

And then Shawn Vanzant made a play. He drove baseline, found Gordon Hayward open on the corner baseline -- just the shot the Bulldogs needed -- and hit him. But Hayward's shot missed, causing a scrum under the hoop. Vanzant not only rebounded the ball, he managed to whip a perfect little pass to Hayward -- who had the presence of mind to leave his spot in the corner and cut furiously to the hoop -- which Hayward finished despite contact from MSU's Draymond Green. The basket gave Butler a four-point lead with 1:36 lead, a deficit Michigan State would never fully close again, eventually losing 52-50.

PLAYER OF THE GAME: Gordon Hayward -- 19 points, nine rebounds, two blocks, two steals. You probably don't need me to explain this, but I will anyway. Not only did Hayward take and make the majority of his team's shots throughout a low-scoring slugfest, he made the key plays down the stretch -- the above layup, and a crucial block on Green with eight seconds remaining and his team up by two -- that sealed the win. Hayward's story, the three-star recruit who took his small in-state school to the biggest stage in college basketball, is already incredible. It added another worthy chapter tonight.

PLAYER OF THE GAME II: Durrell Summers -- 14 points, 10 rebounds, 6-of-12 shooting. Summers' suddenly clicking play was one of the main reasons Michigan State made this unlikely and thoroughly admirable run to the Final Four, and while Summers is no doubt disappointed with the result, at least he can take solace in the fact that this tournament helped rid him of the "inconsistent" label. He was good all the time.

STAT OF THE GAME: Several stats of the game, so let's just jumble them all together.

50 -- the number of points Michigan State scored, making it the fifth team in this tournament to fall short of the 60-point barrier against Butler.
16 -- Michigan State's turnovers, nine of which came in the second half.
6 -- the number of offensive rebounds Michigan State grabbed all game.
55.6 -- Michigan State's free-throw percentage.
30.6 -- Butler's field goal percentage, a testament to how this team wins. It's like they don't need to score. Whoa, man. Whoa.

INJURY BLUES: Mack missed much of Butler's victorious second half with cramps. In the postgame, Brad Stevens didn't know whether he would be able to play on Monday night or not. It goes without saying that Butler's chances of completing this fairy tale run are significantly diminished if Mack's cramps don't improve.

RAYMAR'S NO GOOD VERY BAD NIGHT: Raymar Morgan missed much of the first half with foul trouble. Then, when Tom Izzo was upset with his play early in the second half, he sat some more. Then, with 12:38 left, Morgan was called for his fourth foul -- yet another unnecessary bit of contact that happened approximately 80 feet from Michigan State's basket. Even worse, the foul was Michigan State's seventh, which put Butler into the bonus. Morgan's absence in this game left Michigan State without a good option for stopping Hayward, and it made the Spartans far less balanced on offense. This is the second straight year Morgan has disappeared in the biggest game of his team's season.

INDIANAPOLIS -- We're halfway through what's thus far been an up-and-down game -- a torrid start followed by a major drought in the closing stretches. Fittingly enough, we're tied at 28. Here's some instant reaction and a look ahead to the second half:

HOW THE HALF WAS WON: Butler's guards couldn't contain Korie Lucious and Durrell Summers. The Bulldogs have been shutting down great guards throughout the tournament, holding Syracuse's Andy Rautins and Kansas State's Jacob Pullen and Denis Clemente to minimal contributions in low-scoring games. Not so in the first half tonight. Lucious and Summers were able to find open looks, and for much of the half, they knocked them down.

TURNING POINT: With two minutes left in the first half, it looked like Butler was starting to fade. They couldn't get a bucket, and they had just been victimized by a perfect Lucious bounce pass through their defense, which Summers finished in stride for an easy layup and a 28-23 lead. But with 30 seconds left, Shelvin Mack caught the ball on the wing in the break and iced a 3, the Bulldogs' first since the four-minute mark, and their first non-Hayward bucket since there were eight minutes remaining.

PLAYER OF THE HALF: Gordon Hayward, Butler -- 13 points, three rebounds. Hayward's was 5-of-9 shooting -- including a barrage of 3s and one spinning fadeaway that had to make the NBA scouts in the house drool -- keeping Butler close throughout the first half. The Bulldogs weren't particularly bad from the field. But if Hayward hadn't made a few key 3s, the Spartans could have opened a lead in their torrid first few minutes.

PLAYER OF THE HALF II: Lucious of Michigan State -- eight points, one rebound, three assists, one steal. The aforementioned Lucious didn't just score and needle gorgeous bounce passes through Butler's vaunted defense. He also -- and most importantly -- didn't turn the ball over. Butler has been great at turning its opponents over in its run to the Final Four, but Lucious handled the ball well and Michigan State didn't waste any possessions against the grind-it-out Bulldogs.

STAT OF THE HALF: Offensive rebounds. Butler was never going to dominate Michigan State on the offensive glass, but the Bulldogs were almost invisible after their shots hit the rim. Butler grabbed three of their misses, good for a paltry 17.6 percent from the field. Butler doesn't need to grab many rebounds; Stevens prefers his guys get back and set up that difficult defense rather than crash the glass on the offensive end. But it wouldn't hurt for Butler to preserve a few more of their possessions in the second half.

STAT OF THE HALF II: Fouls. There were lots of them for both teams, a combined 16 total. Michigan State committed nine of those fouls, and Raymar Morgan got three of them, an affliction that caused him to miss much of the first half. The referees seem dedicated to keeping this game relatively free of overwhelming physicality, so Morgan will have to be especially careful in the early moments of the second.

WHAT BUTLER HAS TO DO TO WIN:
1. Hayward has to keep attacking the rim. Michigan State is struggling to match up with him, and with Morgan in foul trouble there's no one that should be able to stop him.
2. You too, Shelvin Mack. Don't settle.
3. Butler has to figure out a way to close down on Lucious, Summers, and the rest of Michigan State's athletic guards better. Butler got here by dominating its opponents on the perimeter, by making everything difficult, by forcing turnovers. That hasn't happened tonight.

WHAT MICHIGAN STATE HAS TO DO TO WIN:
1. Get lots of help on Hayward. You don't want to give up too many open looks, but rotating away from any non-Mack shooters in Butler's lineup is a pretty safe bet. Smart rotations could negate Butler's most effective player without revealing too many holes elsewhere.
2. Keep hitting shots. Simple, but true. It's hard to get good interior looks on Butler's defense. The help is too good. If the shots stop falling, some of that vaunted offensive rebounding wouldn't hurt.
3. Attack Matt Howard. Butler has been able to play without Howard in the past, but his rebounding would be a major boost on offense, and if MSU can keep him foul trouble, they can continue to dominate the glass.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Some thoughts at the half of Butler-Michigan State:

• I thought Butler would have more of a home-court advantage. Nope. There are certainly plenty of Butler folks, but it doesn’t sound like the Bulldogs have an overwhelming advantage.

• I’d love for the NCAA to alternate the seating in each section so we would have more balanced cheering. I don’t like seeing one whole side sitting down during the game.

• Gordon Hayward is the best pro prospect on the court. The Butler forward has a sweet stroke on 3s and had an NBA-level turnaround jumper. He has kept Butler in the game.

• Butler’s Matt Howard can’t stay out of foul trouble. He picked up his second foul only six minutes into the game.

• Michigan State’s Draymond Green has quite a skill set. He can make the face-the-basket shot and put the ball on the court and drive to the hoop.

• If Durrell Summers and Korie Lucious, who started out with a pair of 3s, can make shots in the second half, the Spartans should win. That’s a big "if" though.

• Butler has to get more production from other players beside Hayward and Shelvin Mack.

• Butler’s offensive rebounding has been awful. The Bulldogs went chunks of time without one in the first half. MSU is too good on the glass. Butler’s one-shot offense will only take it so far.

• Michigan State’s Raymar Morgan picked up three first-half fouls. Had he stayed in the game I’m not so sure the outcome would have been much different. The Spartans got quality play from Garrick Sherman.

• Mack’s 3-pointer to tie the game with 36 seconds left in the first half energized a crowd that had become somewhat listless.

• I love that I can look to my left and see clouds and blue sky. I’ve become a fan of Lucas Oil Stadium for college hoops. Still want to see this game in Conseco for the full-effect atmosphere.

To look at Durrell Summers' game log is to look at a player capable of anything. That's not always a compliment.

Summers can dominate a game, can score 30 points, can get to the rim and finish with high-flying dunks almost at will, can hit long threes and do all of the things that have made NBA scouts drool since Summers arrived in East Lansing, Mich. Summers can also completely disappear for large stretches of seemingly random games. He can settle for bad jump shots. He can frustrate his coach. He can make you think that maybe, despite all that talent, Summers might never put it together. Maybe he's just one of those guys.

No more. After four outstanding games in the NCAA tournament -- the latest of which came Sunday, when he scored 21 points on 8-for-10 shooting, including 4-of-6 from the arc -- Summers has officially made good on his prodigious talent. The Spartans are in the Final Four, and Durrell Summers is a major reason why.

Sunday's 70-69 win over Tennessee sends Michigan State to its second Final Four in as many years. It's Tom Izzo's sixth appearance in 12 years. But this year feels slightly different -- Michigan State wasn't its typically powerful self for much of the season, and it didn't have that typical Michigan State swagger entering the NCAA tournament. The Spartans were given a No. 5 seed; few complained.

Then Michigan State guard Kalin Lucas was lost to an achilles tendon injury in Michigan State's last-second win over Maryland, and the Spartans' fate was supposed to be sealed. If UNI didn't beat them, Ohio State would. This was not a Final Four team. This was, despite the name on the front of that new jersey, an underdog.

Oh, but it was, and Durrell Summers' emergence made it so. Consider Summers' last four games -- 14, 26, 19, and 21 points in each. Kalin Lucas' replacement, Korie Lucious, is a capable point guard but isn't nearly the scorer Lucas was. The Spartans needed perimeter scoring. They needed threes. Against Tennessee, an efficient game played at a high offensive level throughout, the Spartans couldn't afford to drop off the pace. Summers' shooting ensured they didn't.

Everything is magnified at the Final Four. Raymar Morgan and Draymond Green and Tom Izzo will receive plenty of plaudits in the next few days, as the Spartans prepare for their match up with fellow No. 5 seed Butler. But perhaps most deserving (other than Izzo, of course, because his consistent success is completely insane) will be Summers, who, after giving MSU fans three years' worth of tantalizing glimpses followed by disappointing disappearances, has finally made good.

A couple of other random observations from Michigan State's Elite Eight win:

• The immediate consensus about this game is that it was extremely well-played on both ends of the floor, and the numbers bear that out: Both teams got points in very efficient fashion -- Michigan State scored 1.2 points per possession, Tennessee 1.19 -- but that had more to do with offensive excellent than defensive ugliness. Take a quick gander at the four factors: Both teams shot the ball well, both teams got to the free throw line at a marginal but not overwhelming, rate, and both teams committed minimal turnovers. There was very little to separate these two, efficiency-wise, and so the game came down to a handful of plays that Michigan State made and Tennessee didn't. That simple.

• This is already an overworn cliche, but it bears repeating: The fact that Tennessee made it to its first Elite Eight after the New Year's Day arrest and eventual dismissal of Tyler Smith is truly remarkable. By all rights, the Volunteers could have looked at the situation, blamed Smith for being an idiot, realized their title hopes were essentially kaput, and packed in the rest of the season. (Like, say, North Carolina. Ahem.) But Tennessee didn't do that. They upset Kansas and Kentucky, stayed competitive in the SEC, got a No. 6 seed, and then made an unlikely but thoroughly impressive run through the NCAA tournament. For all the love Tom Izzo (deservedly) gets for his team's NCAA performances, Bruce Pearl's coaching job since he arrived at Tennessee is worth some serious consideration. He's been excellent. And 2009-10 was his best coaching job yet.

• I'll miss Wayne Chism. The floppy headband, the at-a-whim three-point shots, the sneakily physical interior play -- all of it was awesome. Here's to four entertaining years of Chismball.

ST. LOUIS -- In the latest installment of that long-running hit series, “Tom Izzo, Lord of the Dance,” the climactic scene went like this:

Korie Lucious driving, spinning, fading back and springing up on one foot to splash the game-breaking shot over last week’s hero of March, Ali Farokhmanesh.

Great move. Great shot. Great moment for all of SpartanKind. Michigan State evicts Northern Iowa, 59-52, in what can legitimately be called an upset.

But peel back a few layers on that play and you see why Izzo is just so ridiculously good at this time of year.

Lucious was at the tail end of a career-high 39 minutes – nine more than his previous high and 17 more than his season average. He was playing all those minutes at point guard because the normal starting point, leading scorer Kalin Lucas, was on crutches on the sideline after tearing his Achilles tendon last week. He had missed six of his eight shots on the night against the unyielding Panthers defense.

And Izzo had enough faith in his sophomore backup to call a clear-out for him with the shot clock draining and less than 100 seconds to play and State holding a two-point lead. It wasn’t the do-or-die shot of last Sunday, when Lucious beat Maryland with a 3-pointer at the buzzer, but it was huge.

“Just a hunch,” Izzo said of the play call, one he’s made many times for Lucas. “He said he felt good, and I could tell he was confident. And that was a big, big play.”

That, in summation, is what the March version of IzzoBall is all about. The hunches all come up roses. The injuries are overcome. The puzzling performances from the regular season don’t matter anymore.

And somebody always steps up.

Or several somebodies.

In addition to Lucious on this night, it was Delvon Roe, playing 27 minutes on a torn meniscus and somehow coming up with the most spectacular play of the night, soaring in out of nowhere to crush a rebound dunk early in the second half as Michigan State roared back from a seven-point halftime deficit.

“He gave us every ounce he had,” Izzo said of Roe. “… It’s a cliché: lay it on the line. He laid it all on the line, I can promise you that.”

And it was Durrell Summers, continuing his NCAA tournament flourish with a game-high 19 points. Summers is averaging 20 points per game in the tourney, after averaging 8 over his previous eight games. At times in the first half, Summers was the only thing keeping Michigan State in the game. And at one moment in particular in the second half, he rose up and hit a 3 with 7:27 left to give the Spartans the lead for good.

“At certain times in the game we just kind of huddled up and said it’s winning time,” Summers said. “Pretty much what winning time means for us is we’re going to get down and bite the floor on defense and everything’s going to go through our defense.”

Bite the floor. Perfect. That’s defense the Izzo way. And this was defense the Izzo way:

Northern Iowa’s last basket in this game came with 10 minutes and 21 seconds to play. All the Panthers could manage the rest of the way was 10 free throws, as Michigan State stubbornly took the game away.

That truly was doing unto UNI what UNI had done to so many other teams. In the Missouri Valley Conference tournament, the Panthers held Wichita State without a field goal for 10 minutes in the final, held Bradley without a field goal for seven in the semis and Drake without a field goal for 21 minutes in the quarters.

Now here they were on the receiving end.

“They made us take some tough shots, and they played great defense in the second half,” said Farokhmanesh, who made just 1-of-6 outside the arc.

Northern Iowa joins a long list of teams who have seen their seasons end against Izzo over the past 12 NCAA tourneys. He’s now knocking on the door of a sixth Final Four since 1999, close enough to taste it.

Tennessee stands between Izzo and Indy. He has less than two days to get his hobbled team regrouped, rested and ready to face the big, athletic Volunteers.

“It’s great when you’re working at this time of year,” Izzo said. “And I’m going to be working. My whole staff will be working for the next 40 hours, and we’ll see what we can do.”

We know what Tom Izzo can do in this Dance. That’s why he’s the lord of it.

ST. LOUIS -- Quick thoughts from Michigan State 59, Northern Iowa 52.

Tom Izzo does it again. Finds a way without leading scorer Kalin Lucas. Crashes another regional final. Amazing.

• And with that, the Panthers' run is done. But they gave everyone quite a few thrills along the way. Northern Iowa last scored a basket sometime around February, it felt like. They couldn't find enough ways to score in the last half of the last half to pull off another victory.

• Durrell Summers to the rescue for Michigan State. He scored 19 points, after hanging 26 on Maryland. He's scored 59 points in three tourney games, after scoring 63 in the previous eight games.

• Ali Farokhmanesh, Mr. Big Shot of March, came up largely empty tonight. He was just 1-of-6 from 3-point range.

• Most surprising of all for Northern Iowa was its 14-of-21 free-throw shooting, including two key misses by Adam Koch while down two with 2:05 to play.

SPOKANE, Wash. -- It was one of the great comebacks in NCAA tournament history. And then it wasn't.

Maryland trailed Michigan State by nine points with two minutes left. Then it took the lead -- twice -- in the final 35 seconds.

It was stunning.

Yet the final toss of fairy dust turned out to be green.

Korie Lucious, the Spartans backup point guard, playing at the end only because Kalin Lucas was out with a torn Achilles tendon, ripped a fade-away 3-pointer at the buzzer and Michigan State escaped with an 85-83 victory in the second round of the Midwest Regional.

It was stunning, take 2. As breathless a final two minutes as you'll see.

Heartbreak?

"It seemed like we were going to win the game and then it was taken away from us," said a stricken Maryland coach Gary Williams.

And euphoria: The Michigan State players piled on Lucious after his game-winner. Even Sparty joined the fray.

"Time was running out," Lucious said. "I just tried to get it up and it went in."

Spartans coach Tom Izzo is now 15-3 in second-round games as his team tries to reach its sixth Final Four in 12 seasons.

The Spartans dominated 38 minutes of the game. They did so with Lucas out the entire second half -- he's likely done for the tournament -- with fellow starting guard Chris Allen only able to play four minutes with a sprained foot and with forward Delvon Roe nursing bum knees.

It was another plot twist in a season that has been all over the place. From high rankings to player suspensions, to critical injuries and inconsistent play to -- now -- a third consecutive Sweet 16.

"Three weeks ago, we wouldn't have won this game," said Draymond Green, who thought he might have shot the game winner when he hit a jumper for an 82-81 lead with 20 seconds left.

But after Green's shot, Maryland raced down the court and Greivis Vasquez, who struggled against the physical defense of Raymar Morgan much of the afternoon, nailed a short jumper with six seconds left that put the Terrapins up 83-82.

Vasquez scored seven of his 26 points over the final 1:27.

"We had the game won for a moment," said Maryland's Eric Hayes, who scored 18 points with seven assists.

Only for a moment. The Spartans controlled the vast majority of the contest because they dominated the boards -- outrebounding Maryland 42-24 -- and their lone remaining starting guard, Durrell Summers was lights out.

Summers, who's been in Izzo's doghouse at various times this year, scored 26 points, hitting 6-of-7 from 3-point range. It's the season scoring high for any Spartan player.

"Durrell, he grew up a lot in the last two weeks," Izzo said.

He and the Spartans appear to be maturing at exactly the right time.