“What else is there to do besides go to the games?” asked Toledo resident Don Tierney. Tierney was sitting in his seat at Pepsi Center in Denver on Saturday with longtime friend and Lansing native Lanita Brown for more than four hours before MSU took on Pittsburgh that afternoon.

“I was actually thinking about it earlier … I have attended 134 of the last 135 men’s basketball games.”

The Denver site didn’t stop the two from meeting, it was instead a pathway for both of them to see postseason Green and White basketball.

“I picked (Brown) up in Indiana and we drove the rest of the way together,” Tierney said. “We always meet up and head to the games together. We always find a way.”

Brown even makes special cookies for the team before every game.

“Oh, they know me by name,” she said with a smile. “They know me as the Cookie Lady.”

As for Larry and Janet Gunthorbe — who made the trip from their home in East Lansing — they have their sights set on attending their fourth Final Four in a couple weeks.

“Wherever MSU goes, we’ll be there with them,” Larry Gunthorbe said. “We even went to high school with Magic (Johnson). We’re attached to this university even though we didn’t attend it.”

Although the Spartans have struggled at times during this season, the Gunthorbes never hopped off the bandwagon, not this year or any other year.

“We’ve been there with the team through it all this season,” Larry Gunthorbe said. “That’s how it’s always been. We just love MSU basketball.”

All four MSU basketball junkies agreed that freshman guard Kalin Lucas is the team’s most exciting player, an up-and-coming superstar.

“He just brings so much energy,” Janet Gunthorbe said.

Her husband chimed in and added that Lucas is “the future of the program.”

“NCAA President Myles Brand could have gone anywhere, but he picked Denver,” Larry Gunthorbe said.

“Andy Katz, ESPN analyst, he could have gone to any of the sites, but he came here. That tells you something about this city — this arena. It’s special.”