The basketball court at the Carrier Dome erupted into pandemonium after the final buzzer on Sunday, when MSU defeated Louisville to advance to the Final Four.
Players hugged each other. A team celebration briefly took place at center court. Senior guard Travis Trice spent several seconds crying on the floor.
In the middle of the ruckus, freshman guard Lourawls “Tum Tum” Nairn was on the phone with his mom, asking her if she could see him on TV.
“She didn’t say anything back, she was crying the whole time,” Nairn said. “I told her I would call her after everything was over with.”
It’s been a long journey for both Nairn and his mom, Monalisa McKinney, who will be in Indianapolis this weekend to watch Nairn play for only the third time.
“It was special for her because 20 years ago, you know, she has a disease,” Nairn said. “She has Sickle Cell, she’s anemic. The doctors told her, she went in the doctor’s office and they told her she would never be able to have kids. I can’t imagine how she’s feeling. Thank God for that, man.”
Nairn, a Nassau, Bahamas native, didn’t watch many Final Four’s growing up. He said on Wednesday he didn’t fall in love with the game of basketball until he was 13, and only watched Derrick Rose take Memphis to the big dance in 2008.
He said he was attracted to MSU because of the school’s history of producing winning basketball teams. MSU’s style of play — fast and strong, Nairn said — was a major point.
Nairn also felt comfortable with head coach Tom Izzo.
“We were laughing like I had known him my whole life,” Nairn said of one of his first phone conversations with Izzo. “ He told me he was interested in making me a better man, a better person and a better basketball player. And for him to say that. That he would be interested in making me a better man, it meant a lot to me.”
. Izzo said when Draymond Green visited campus last summer, he pointed out Nairn as a young leader.
“He told me at the end of the summer, ‘you got some good leaders,’” Izzo said. “He was talking about Trav and ‘Zel. He said the best one might be Tum. Make sure they mentor him.”
More than seven months later, Nairn is the starting point guard of Izzo’s seventh Final Four team.
“It’s been an amazing journey, man,” Nairn said.
