Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo yells out to his team during a practice session for men's Final Four NCAA college basketball tournament Friday, April 3, 2009, in Detroit
DETROIT – Coming to you from high atop the Final Four . . .
It is Friday, and the Michigan State Spartans are shooting layups at practice.
We can see that from eight stories up, which is the altitude of the top floor at Ford Field.
Not a bad view, especially if you’re a hawk. And for no extra charge, you get proof that light travels faster than sound.
You see the ball dribbled, and an instant later, you hear the bounce.
Welcome to the Final Four – in the new jumbo size.
They are expecting a record crowd of 70,000-plus Saturday, and that takes a place with room. Example: I walked from the edge of the court up a long ramp to the Villanova locker room.
Final count was 310 steps. That means the Wildcats will travel more than a quarter-mile walking back and forth at halftime.
Or, they can grab a cab.
Michigan State played a game here against Kentucky in 2003 and 78,129 showed up. Coach Tom Izzo was trying to describe the other day his memory of walking up the ramp and out into the din.
“I felt like I was a gladiator in Rome,” he said.
The basketball floor is elevated, so a coach can sit on a stool by himself up on the surface, or stay below on the bench, and have the sensation of watching the Final Four from a Wrigley Field dugout.
The huge video screens on each end throw a reflective glare off the glass backboards, noticed most from the foul line.
If the videos are bright and busy when a man is at the line, it will be like shooting free throws in a disco.
“A different venue,” Connecticut’s Jim Calhoun said Friday.
From the eighth floor, Ford Field looks vast and beautiful, if not quite the place you want to have a basketball game. Down below, the Michigan State practice continues. Someone is dunking. Not quite sure who.
One team will win two more games in here this weekend than the Lions did all last NFL season. Which team? If we want to take a wide-angle view of the field to decide, this seems the place to sit.
Notice the huge banners hanging in the corners, with the mileage to each school. Mapquest has bad news for Connecticut. The Huskies are 746 miles from home. Michigan State is only 92. A green and white throng is expected Saturday.
Plus, the Spartans sense destiny as a tailwind. The Final Four has been offered to Detroit as an economic Tylenol capsule, and Michigan State making the field gets thrown in as a bonus.
“It’s a storybook story so far,” Izzo said.
Point for Michigan State.
But Connecticut is 17-2 away from home this season and has won in such hostile territories as Louisville, Marquette and West Virginia.
The Huskies have been hardened by adversity, starting with the coach, who has twice fought cancer. When Calhoun says of his players, as he does Friday, that “they were the best medicine I could ever possibly receive,” how could fate not be tempted?
Point for the Huskies.
After Scottie Reynolds’ last-second shot against Pittsburgh – the signature moment so far of this entire NCAA Tournament – Villanova has the look of an underdog team touched with magic. Even from up here.
Point to Villanova.
But North Carolina has the horses, the pedigree and the Final Four meltdown last year as hard experience, when the Tar Heels were down to Kansas 40-12 before you could say Mario Chalmers.
“We looked around and said, ‘My goodness, we’re in the Final Four.’ They hit us right in the mouth,” coach Roy Williams said. “It took us 15 minutes before we realized we were playing a game.”
Speaking of playing, North Carolina star guard Ty Lawson – of legal gambling age – won $250 the other night at the craps table, which is something you don’t see before every Final Four.
No word if “One shining moment” played when Lawson’s dice came up a winner.
Lawson’s trip has raised a few eyebrows, to the annoyance of Williams.
“If we don’t want those kids doing it, don’t put the Final Four in a city where the casino is 500 yards from our front door,” he says. “You know where I was supposed to stay (with the coaches convention) if my team hadn’t come? Caesar’s Palace.”
All in all, a most unusual Final Four setting. But it can be seen clearly from up here. North Carolina over Connecticut on Monday night.
Michigan State's Goran Suton leads his team out to the court for a practice session on Friday in Detroit. Michigan State will face Connecticut on Saturday.
Calhoun
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FINAL FOUR
Saturday on CBS
No. 1 Connecticut vs. No. 2 Michigan State, 3:07 p.m.
No. 1 North Carolina vs. No. 3 Villanova, 5:47 p.m.