Quest for a championship

Steve Addy

Monday, April 3, 2000 | 10:50 a.m.

INDIANAPOLIS -- The often contentious marriage of man and machine is woven into the very fabric of this city, where the wail of "Taps" at Indianapolis Motor Speedway is more than a Memorial Day salute to fallen veterans.

How fitting, then, that Michigan State's quest for an NCAA championship could pull into victory lane here tonight, because the Spartans' drive for superiority began with an auto accident that nearly claimed the lives of Mateen Cleaves and four other players.

In fact, when Maurice Taylor's Ford Explorer rolled over on Interstate 94 in Detroit on a snowy February night in 1996, the balance of power in Michigan college basketball flipped upside down with it.

No one was seriously hurt in the wreck, which occurred on Cleaves' official recruiting visit to Michigan, but it sent the popular program into a downward spiral that still hasn't abated.

From that night on, the baggy shorts and wagging tongues of the Wolverines didn't seem quite so trendy after all, especially after the NCAA started snooping around Ann Arbor. And suddenly the Spartans and coach Tom Izzo became a credible option for Cleaves and other high school stars in the fertile triangle that connects Detroit, Flint and Lansing.

Barely five years later, Michigan State is one win away from the validation that Michigan's Fab Five and their overhyped successors never earned. Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Jalen Rose, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson reached the NCAA championship game as freshman starters in 1992, and again the next year, but won neither. Consequently, their legacy is more style than substance.

Buttoned-down Michigan State won't be recalled that way regardless of what happens tonight, but the Spartans also don't wish to be emerge empty-handed from two straight Final Fours. Last year, they were defeated by Duke in the semifinals. This time, MSU (31-7) outwrestled Wisconsin 53-41 on Saturday to win a championship date against fast Florida (29-8) at 6:18 p.m. at the RCA Dome.

If the Spartans win, they'll become the first Big Ten team to claim the title since Michigan in 1989. But those were the Glen Rice Wolverines, not the Fab Five Wolverines, whose hip-hop style was reviled by "old Blues;" they applauded the victories, but held their noses all the while.

Michigan State wants to go where the Fab Five never could.

"If we win the national championship, it will give us a leg up on the Fab Five. The times have changed, and Michigan State is the school of choice in Michigan now," said guard Charlie Bell, one of three remaining Flint products who sparked the Spartans' resurgence.

"When I was coming up, Michigan was the school that everybody wanted to go to," Cleaves said. "They were always on TV, they had the All-Americans, they had all the flashy players. Michigan State was always second to Michigan. But, you know, I always went for the underdog when I was a kid, so I really fell in love with Michigan State."

But that didn't stop Cleaves from visiting Michigan as a recruit. In fact, he was widely viewed as a lock for the Wolverines, who were dominating in-state recruiting. Webber and Rose came out of Detroit, as did successors Taylor and Robert Traylor; each is in the NBA now.

But then came the Explorer accident. With Taylor, Traylor, two fellow Wolverines and Cleaves in the SUV, Taylor reportedly fell asleep while driving back to Ann Arbor from a party in Detroit. The vehicle rolled and was demolished. Everyone walked away, but Cleaves suffered a back injury that still nags him.

More importantly for Michigan State, it scared him away from Michigan.

Though Flint natives Antonio Smith (now graduated) and Morris Peterson were already at MSU, the addition of Cleaves really put the Spartans back on the radar of top recruits. Bell showed up a year later, having broken all of the Flint scoring records once owned by the likes of Rice, Roy Marble, Trent Tucker and Jeff Grayer.

The earnest appeal of Izzo weighed heavily in the recruitment of the so-called Flintstones, and his steady development into one of the top young colleges coaches has affirmed their faith.

"You could tell what kind of guy (Izzo) was, very humble and hard working," Cleaves said. "I fell in love with him, because he meant what he said. When you get recruited, coaches will tell you a lot of things. You could just tell he was coming from the heart. He was very sincere."

Bell said, "There was really a family atmosphere when I visited Michigan State. On my visit to Michigan, it seemed like everybody was doing his own thing."

Izzo credits his players for choosing the Spartans while Michigan was all the rage.

"I talked to them about coming in and doing something special," Izzo said. "You have to give them credit because they took the chance. They didn't need to go to flash-and-dash. They wanted to build their own roads. Thank God they did."

If things go the Spartans' way tonight, Izzo will surely get around to thanking everybody else.