Michigan State players and coaches celebrate with their Big Ten Championship trophy last week.EAST LANSING — There’s a measuring stick often used to assess college coaches by evaluating them on how they fare when their first recruiting class matures.
So what, then, of how a fully-blossomed team and its coach perform under the circumstances neither parties originally orchestrated?
When Joanne McCallie left the Michigan State women's basketball program for Duke in spring 2007, the Spartans' incoming freshman class — which includes now-seniors Cetera Washington, Brittney Thomas and Kalisha Keane, along with redshirt junior Lykendra Johnson — was left to decide between transfer options or the incoming Suzy Merchant regime.
Merchant visited each player to reiterate the invitation to East Lansing. She embraced the players and they embraced her. Now, they will all be fitted for rings.
The coach of the No. 11 Spartans (25-4, 13-3) likes to refer to her team as “high-character kids.” That was hardly more evident than in their first decisions as Spartans, when they chose to remain so. And their title — the program’s first outright Big Ten Conference championship — has now been validated as much by what happened on the floor in 2010-11 as what happened off it in 2007.
“My teammates, starting freshman year, we had a bond,” Thomas said. “We couldn’t leave. It didn’t matter how the year was going. We couldn’t leave. We were too tight with each other to leave somebody behind like that.
“Every team faces adversity and has struggles, but because we were able to bond on such a personal level off the court, it helped us face every challenge head on.”
The Spartans’ next challenge lies ahead Friday, when they will have their opener in the Big Ten tournament (6 p.m., Big Ten Network) as the top seed for the first time in school history.
There, Merchant again will rely on her upperclassmen.
“We’ve got a veteran group that really understands it and has been there,” Merchant said. “You look at the course of their 3-4 years, and you really have a sense that they get it and it’s not new to them. They really know how things can catch fire in March and it’s just one play sometimes, just one free throw. They have a sense of urgency when it comes to understanding survive and advance.
“That’s a department on our team that I don’t really have to spend time focusing on.”
For a team built with players who understand and execute their roles so proficiently, Keane, Thomas and Washington set the standard.
Keane, the Big Ten Player of the Year, is the No. 1 option — the team’s best scorer and most versatile player. Thomas is the pass-first-shoot-second true point guard who delivers on the break and in the half court, superb with the ball in her hands at the end of games. And Washington fits the bill for a fiery Merchant-style defensive stopper.
“Every team believes they can win a championship — every year you’re supposed to believe that — but it was a different feeling this year,” Thomas said. “We felt it like it was our time. To see it happening and to see the banner raised is pretty sweet.”
Ninety-three career wins (and counting) later, the senior class has undoubtedly had a four-year experience unlike one they expected. Of course, the same goes for Merchant.
But when they raised a banner to the Breslin Center rafters in East Lansing last week, nobody was complaining.
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