Senior forward Marquise Gray dances as the Spartans clinch the NCAA Midwest Regional Championship Sunday evening at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. MSU beat the Louisville Cardinals 64-52.
—When the MSU men’s basketball team made its remarkable run to the Final Four in 2005, three redshirts sat on the end of the bench waiting for their chance to get on college basketball’s biggest stage.
Four years later, senior center Goran Suton, senior forward Marquise Gray and senior center Idong Ibok get their chance to be under the bright lights of the Final Four. They can finally show how far they’ve come from being on the scout team prepping the 2005 team for their trip to St. Louis.
Gray said his experience in 2005 is a great source of pride, even if he didn’t step foot on the floor as a regular player.
“You ask any of these guys if we go somewhere (where we have to dress up), I wear my ring and my watch from the first one,” Gray said. “It’s something only a handful of guys get. LeBron James is in the league, anything he wants he can have, but he don’t have a Final Four ring.”
Lots of attention has been paid to senior guard Travis Walton making his first trip to the Final Four, continuing head coach Tom Izzo’s streak of getting every recruiting class that has stayed four years to the end of The Big Dance.
However, as Suton said, the three redshirts from 2005 shouldn’t be overlooked.
“I know usually people think about it and say I already made it to the Final Four, but I really didn’t,” Suton said. “I was there but I didn’t play one minute, you know? This is my first Final Four, too.”
The seniors have been talking with the team’s younger players all week, making sure they keep their focus among the constant distractions success brings, something Gray has had to deal with. He said he nearly turned off his phone in the first few days after defeating Louisville in the Elite Eight due to the massive amounts of text messages and calls he was receiving.
After getting off the team bus from the trip back to East Lansing from Indianapolis Sunday night, Gray said he looked at his phone and saw he received 36 text messages and 17 or 18 voice mails during the trip.
“I can’t supply the whole city of Flint with a ticket, you know,” Gray said.
Ibok said he’s excited to get the full Final Four experience as a full-time player, especially as many anticipate him getting work guarding Connecticut’s massive center, junior Hasheem Thabeet. He can’t wait for the rush that will come with donning the green and white in front of 75,000 fans at Ford Field.
“It makes you just want to prepare, be focused, go out there and do what you’re called upon to do,” Ibok said.
Suton was just beginning his transformation into a dominant presence during the 2005 season. As a player on the scout team, Suton said he felt he had a hand in that particular season, but has invested much more in this season’s run, in which he has been an integral part of the team.
“When you don’t play, you don’t feel like you’ve done as much and I obviously didn’t put in as much (work) as I did this time,” Suton said. “It means more to me because now I am a huge part of this team.”
Despite the thought of playing in front of what is expected to be the largest crowd for a Final Four in NCAA history, Gray said there won’t be any pregame butterflies when he checks in for the first time.
“I’m not nervous, never nervous, because you know it’s not my first time playing basketball,” Gray said. “It’s a dream come true, like I said, and I thank God I’m fortunate and blessed enough to play in the Final Four in our hometown. It’s just an unbelievable opportunity.
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