This Is For Bragging Rights

Michigan State’s Mateen Cleaves has had the picture in his mind since he was a kid back home in Flint, Mich.

“Me standing there holding one championship trophy and Magic Johnson standing beside me holding the other one,” Cleaves said. “Wouldn’t that be one for the history books?”

History books, screensavers, T-shirts, coffee mugs, recruiting brochures. Click and print. Just make sure the camera is in focus because the whole state of Michigan, other than maybe Ann Arbor, will be wanting one.

A full generation after Johnson, along with Larry Bird, had created big time Final Four basketball and the pair of them went on to rescue the NBA from indifference and its own excesses, Michigan State again is campus champion.

Nothing so grand awaits the Talented Mr. Cleaves, limited and playing most of the second half on one working ankle. But for one night the joy and glory of a special college career collided in the perfect finish. Cleaves and his running buddies from home, Morris Peterson and Charlie Bell, the Flintstones, easily identified by the shoulder tattoo “Flint,” were the rocks upon which Tom Izzo built a team that has won or shared the last three Big Ten titles, made the last two Final Fours and now has won the biggest prize of all.

“When all the greats come back to school, I just want to have some bragging rights,” Cleaves said. “I’m not going to talk about individual things. I’m going to talk about championships.”

Cleaves’ dreams were only a little fresher than Izzo’s, who had shared his with childhood friend Steve Mariucci, coach of the San Francisco 49ers. Both are from Iron Mountain, Mich., described by Izzo as, “Eleven months of winter and one month of bad sledding. It’s a miner’s town. We put our hats on, flick the little light in the front.”

The two of them had dreamed of coaching Notre Dame and had a friendly wager on who would get there first. The bet now has changed to who wins a title in his sport. Mariuccci is behind, 1-0.

Michigan State saved its best tournament game for last, against an opponent that either allowed the Spartans to express their not heretofore obvious skill or was helpless to prevent it.

Florida played to its age and to its short attention span. Florida played as if it could not remember what it was doing in a house built for almost everything but a game as intimate as basketball, illustrated best by guard Teddy DuPay seeming to try an open-field tackle on Cleaves that led to the ankle injury.

Cleaves limped to the first aid of the locker room, did what was necessary and returned to the arena to deserved cheers. Cleaves had missed the beginning of the season with a foot injury. He would not miss the end.

If the Gators had won, the state would have had the reigning champions in every campus sport that matters. Nice way to start a new century. We have seen the future, and it is below the Suwanee River.

Florida State wins the football title, Miami grabs the baseball championship. And now the University of Florida, already too smug to love for its football dominance, would have been the king of college basketball. I’m wondering, does Stetson have a hockey team?

It would have been only the sixth time one state had won both the football and basketball championships. Florida would have joined Michigan, Ohio State, UCLA, Arkansas and, already, Michigan State.

But here came Cleaves and friends to save the world from the Spread of Spurrier.

“Football has always been the king in the South,” Florida football coach Steve Spurrier had said earlier in the week. “As far as basketball goes, when you’re hanging NIT banners in your gym, that says you don’t have much of a tradition.”

Coach Billy Donovan is correcting that. Florida loses only one player from a team that has gone Sweet 16, Final Two in the last two years.

Wherever Cleaves goes from here, and I’m thinking either Rockford or Greece, this was the night that defines his legend, the night he dreamed about in those days when Michigan State was the only school allowed on his home TV, those times he and his dad would watch the Final Four and share the unspoken dream, when Cleaves and Peterson would take the same bus to different schools, pound at each other in neighborhood games, and vow to be snipping nets together one day.

“When I first saw him,” said Peterson, “he was this stubby guy.”

Still is.

Said Izzo, “If one guy ever had a true dream, to hear `One Shining Moment’ with his face on the TV screen, it’s Mateen.”

Another picture for the scrapbook, as if there weren’t enough already.