MSU bounces back vs. Oklahoma to return to Elite Eight

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Faced with a long day of waiting for a Sweet 16 game that would start Friday night and finish this morning, Tom Izzo asked captains Denzel Valentine and Travis Trice what they wanted to do to kill some time.

How about a movie?

"Shows you how soft I'm getting," Izzo said hours later, after a 62-58 comeback win over Oklahoma in the Sweet 16 to get his team, incredibly, within a victory of the Final Four. "I probably caused the problems in the first half. Instead of grinding it on some film, (the players) went to a damn movie."

They saw the Will Ferrell comedy "Get Hard," and that turned out to be a fitting prelude to the way they kept their season alive. Punked early and down 10 quickly, out of sorts on both ends and clanging free throws in droves, the East Regional No. 7 seed Spartans (26-11) refused to let their season expire.

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"It felt like our season," MSU junior center Matt Costello, who joined Trice, Valentine and Branden Dawson with key second-half plays, said of the game. "Where the beginning of the season was terrible. And we finished it out at the end."

And they can finish an improbable run to Izzo's seventh Final Four by beating No. 4 seed Louisville (27-8) in the East Regional final at the Carrier Dome (2:20 p.m., CBS). This is his ninth Elite Eight in Izzo's 18th straight NCAA tournament, and he said one more win "would be one of the sweeter moments in my career, because I think it would teach you that you can do it in a lot of different ways."

MSU did it Friday (and early today) with a whole bunch of Trice and Dawson. Trice kept the Spartans in it early when they trailed by 10 points three different times in the first half, and he finished with a game-high 24 points. Hours after his father and little brother got Huber Heights (Ohio) Wayne to its first state championship game, he continued his scorching postseason.

"You saw Travis Trice pull a Mateen Cleaves, put us on his back and give a Mateen Cleaves effort, and you saw a bunch of guys follow him," MSU assistant coach Mike Garland said of Trice, who is averaging 20.7 points per game in the tournament.

Valentine had 18 points and seven rebounds – becoming MSU's 48th player to reach 1,000 career points -- after a rough start. He was 2 for 9 from the field in the first half and said "I felt like it was my first time playing basketball."

"But I just kind of snapped out of it," he said, "and I was like, 'I'm in the Sweet 16, and we've got a chance to go to the Final Four. I'm dreaming, what the heck?' I just slapped the ground and I woke up, I guess."

MSU's defense tightened after the No. 3 seed Sooners (24-11) raced to an 18-8 lead by starting 8-for-11 from the floor – they were 12-for-44 from there.

"Their defense definitely bothered us in the long run," said Oklahoma big man TaShawn Thomas, who had 16 points to go with Buddy Hield's 21.

Dawson (six points, 11 rebounds) recovered from a quiet first half to give MSU its first lead, 44-42, on a short jumper with 9:32 left. He gave MSU the lead back with another one. The Sooners got it back, but Costello responded by dunking his own miss.

And that would stand. A resulting fast break found Valentine alone in the open court with bodies flying. He flipped in a three-pointer to make it 51-47. Trice bombed one to make it 54-49 with 5:02 to play.

MSU's next points came with 2:03 remaining – a slick Trice drive and short fadeaway jumper to make it 56-51.

Then Trice and Valentine had to seal the victory at the line, where the Spartans were 3-for-10 in the first 38 minutes and 11 seconds of the game. In the final 1:19, Trice was 4-for-4 and Valentine was 2-for-2.

All six were in 1-and-1 situations, the kind that have hurt the Spartans so often this season.

"I'm just thinking, 'Knock them down,'" said Trice, who was 6-for-6 from the line for the game.

"They were the key to the ballgame," Oklahoma coach Lon Kruger said of MSU's backcourt stars.

"It just shows you how big of (guts) Travis and Zel have," Costello said. "They want that moment. They want that pressure, and they came through for us in a big way."

So after Izzo said his team "reverted back for a little while" to some of the early-season softness he worked for months to eradicate, it was anything but soft late. On Syracuse's home floor, MSU passed Syracuse to move into eighth place all-time with 62 NCAA wins.

One more would be almost too Hollywood to believe, but Izzo was prepared to do some plotting in the wee hours today.

"I get to work another day," he said. "Can't tell you how excited that makes me."

Contact Joe Rexrode: jrexrode@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @joerexrode. Check out his MSU blog at freep.com/heyjoe.