Dana O'Neil, ESPN Senior Writer 9y

How they got to the Final Four: Michigan State Spartans

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- For a coach, picking your favorite team is like asking a parent to pick a favorite child.

He may have one, but ordinarily he won't admit it.

Tom Izzo, however, has no trouble telling the truth.

This Michigan State Spartans team, a group of undersized overachievers, has won his heart.

"It'll go down as the best one, just because of what we went through all year," Izzo said. "This team had the least chance to get there, so that makes it a little special."

These Spartans weren't so much counted out as never counted in. Drubbed by Duke in the second game of the season, losers at one point to Texas Southern, projected to be a 9-seed after losing at home to Illinois, Michigan State did not look like much of a Final Four team.

And yet here the Spartans are, 76-70 overtime winners against Louisville, back in the national semifinals of the NCAA tournament.

It is not pixie dust that brings them to Indianapolis. It's hard work. For so long this team looked nothing like a traditional Izzo squad -- soft, he called it -- but since the Big Ten tournament, the Spartans have found their inner grit. They beat Louisville at their own game, using a suffocating defense in the second half that limited the Cardinals to just 5-of-25 shooting.

Montrezl Harrell, a beast in the first half with 12 points, was a ghost after the break, with just four more.

"I honestly thought this would be one of our worst defensive teams when the year started," Izzo said. "So I'm proud that our defense reared its head in the second half because that was the battle cry at halftime."

That, and a simple message that ran especially clear to a team that watched seniors Adreian Payne and Keith Appling sob after not making it to the Final Four a year ago, the first seniors under Izzo to fail to make the last weekend of the season.

"I just told them, 'Two more hours of work, 60 years of memories,'" Izzo said.

Star of the regional: Travis Trice.  An unlikely hero for an unlikely team seems to make good sense. Trice wasn't entirely overlooked -- he had mid-major offers early in his recruitment and more than a few Big Ten schools tried to jump on the bandwagon late in the summer before his senior year. But no one targeted him as a future regional MOP.

And yet that's exactly what he is. Trice scored 17 points, made five assists and played with such confidence against Louisville that Izzo knew he couldn't take him out. Trice played all but one minute in the Elite Eight game.

Big moment in Syracuse: Branden Dawson connected on just four field goals for Michigan State, but he hit the one that mattered most.

With 28 seconds left in overtime and the Spartans clinging to a 72-70 lead, Dawson found himself in the right spot. Bryn Forbes missed a 3-pointer from deep in the corner, but Dawson was there to corral the rebound, his 11th of the game. He went right back up, scoring the putback with a kiss off the glass.

The four-point lead was all Michigan State would need to book a trip to the Final Four.

"The ball came to me and I went up, and I was falling down at the same time," Dawson said. "It was great to get that offensive rebound."

What's next: The Spartans roll to their seventh Final Four under Tom Izzo, their third in seven years, to face Duke. In November, the Blue Devils beat the Spartans handily 81-71, but that might as well have been a lifetime ago.

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