How Michigan and Michigan State basketball restored hope for rivalry

EAST LANSING — In the happy aftermath, the two most prominent Michigan State coaches met at courtside Saturday. The moment was frozen in time, captured in a photo shared hundreds of times on Twitter. There was Mel Tucker gripping the shoulders of Tom Izzo, celebrating Michigan State basketball's 59-53 conquest of Michigan.

“I told Mel that game was for him,” Izzo said.

But the victory wasn’t dedicated to his football counterpart for the reason so many would expect.

No, Izzo explained, it was because “defense won the game and it’s important to him.”

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The same could be said for Izzo. After all, it’s the main ingredient in his durable recipe of success. On Saturday, his Spartans created a forcefield around the basket with a thicket of defenders in the post and a moving battalion guarding the perimeter. They didn’t cede an inch. But neither did the Wolverines. For 40 minutes, the two teams engaged in a struggle that Izzo likened to a “slugfest.” Michigan coach Juwan Howard called it “an extremely competitive game.” Together, the teams shot 36% from the field and rarely scored on consecutive trips down the floor. At times, it was downright ugly and brutish.

But it was never uncivil. The old-fashioned Big Ten clash unfolded in the shadow of the Oct. 29 tunnel incident at Michigan Stadium that marked one of the ugliest chapters in the heated rivalry between the two schools. In the aftermath of the Wolverines’ 29-7 victory over the Spartans, a group of MSU football players attacked a pair of Michigan defensive backs. The fracas, part of which was caught on video, made national headlines. Eight members of Michigan State’s football team were immediately suspended and seven of them would later face criminal charges levied by the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office. The Big Ten also reprimanded and sanctioned MSU, fining the university $100,000. The penalty caused Izzo to enter the fray in November and air his grievances.

“Maybe my own administration will be mad at me for saying this,” Izzo said then. “But I'm not happy with it.”

The fiery rhetoric raised the temperature of a college sports feud that boiled over on Internet message boards and social media, where fans sniped back and forth with nasty invective. The fear was that the rivalry's increased toxicity could spill onto the basketball court. Hunter Dickinson, Michigan's best player and chief agitator, stoked the flames some more last month when he said on a podcast, "You only go to Michigan State if you don't get into Michigan." Izzo took his own swipe on the MSU Coaches Show this past week when he asked Spartans fans to show class, before adding, "I’m not worried about that. Plus, we have separate tunnels."

But amid all the pregame drama, the game Saturday restored hope that Michigan and Michigan State can compete fiercely and do so without hostility or violence. Aside from a pair of technical fouls assessed to guards Dug McDaniel of U-M and Tyson Walker of MSU within the first four minutes, tempers rarely flared. Even when Jace Howard delivered a hip check that sent MSU forward Malik Hall flying into Michigan’s bench, a flashpoint didn't occur. Hall brushed it off, saying, “Stuff like that happens. It’s the game of basketball. He was trying to go for the ball. I was trying to go for the ball.”

As MSU forward Joey Hauser said, “We weren’t going to put ourselves in a position that cost our team by doing something dumb.”

The Spartans, who extended their winning streak to six games, instead fed off a crowd in a charged atmosphere. Whenever Michigan State created some momentum, the student section bobbed up and down and the Breslin Center pulsated. The fans also gave Dickinson the business — booing him during pregame introductions and then again as he celebrated his first basket. There was even some good-natured trolling with the in-house DJ playing The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” and Endor’s “Pump it up,” a pair of anthems that provide the soundtrack at Michigan games.

None of it seemed malicious, however.

“I have always said this after my third year: I respect them,” Izzo said. “And that’s what I told my players we’re going to do. We’re going to respect them. I don’t know how the fans were. I pleaded with them because I wanted to cheer for us and nothing else.”

But Izzo can only control so much.

As the two teams went their separate ways following the final horn, Dickinson straggled behind his teammates. Just as he was leaving the Breslin Center floor, the remaining fans jeered him one last time. Then, he disappeared into the quiet of the visitors’ tunnel to contemplate the loss as Izzo and Tucker savored a victory over their biggest rival. It was an uneventful postscript, which was nice for a change.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How Michigan and Michigan State basketball restored hope for rivalry