John Blanchette: Written-off teams thrive at Arena

All those second chances Americans love to give? It seems as if you have to take a mistress, use a needle or wind up in front of a judge to get one.

That was Tiger trolling for goodwill and bumping highlights of actual sporting events off the sports channel on Sunday night, wasn’t it?

Meanwhile, common adversity gets you dismissed with a shrug. For instance, the basketball team at Purdue lost its best player a few weeks back and was immediately shuffled into the NCAA tournament discard pile. The president picked Siena to beat them in the opening round, but not before everyone else did.

Then in Sunday’s second round, Michigan State had its best player hop to the bench in pain late in the first half against Maryland. As they already had one guard with a bum foot and their season had been defined by dysfunction anyway, they were doomed – even with a 16-point lead. That they couldn’t get the ball inbounds against the Maryland press without an injunction suggested as much.

That both the Boilermakers and Spartans survived and celebrated Sunday – and how they did it – made for the best back-to-back games of the bracket so far, and right here at little old Spokane Arena. And for the grumps who couldn’t sell off their tickets fast enough because neither Gonzaga nor any of the top seeds were sent this way, well, it serves you right. You lost bigger than the Zags did Sunday.

You weren’t there to watch the preposterous spectacle of Greivis Vasquez shooting Maryland back from a nine-point deficit in the last two minutes – only to have Spartans guard Korie Lucious slide step left to shake defender Landon Milbourne and swish a 3-pointer at the buzzer that sent Michigan State to its ninth Sweet 16 in 15 years under coach Tom Izzo.

You didn’t see the dogpile that buried Lucious and you didn’t see Izzo give a watery-eyed embrace at midcourt to leading scorer Kalin Lucas, whose season ended just before halftime with what appears to be a torn Achilles tendon.

And you didn’t see Purdue’s Chris Kramer, some Division II school’s missing linebacker, make a startling crossover and drive for the winning bucket in the expiring seconds of overtime against Texas A&M – another facial for those who wrote off the Boilermakers when hotshot Robbie Hummel wrecked a knee back in February.

This after walking into the timeout huddle moments before and saying, “I want the ball.” He did not offer his 6.3 scoring average as collateral.

“Whenever somebody big-time goes down, everybody counts you out,” Kramer said. “Especially somebody like Rob, who’s so big for us the way Kalin Lucas is big for Michigan State. It’s just what people do.”

What they don’t count on is the cocktail of extra adrenaline or hyper-accountability that often overcomes the players who remain – or is urged upon then, as Izzo did at halftime with Draymond Green and Raymar Morgan.

“When they told me that ‘K’ was done,” Izzo recalled, “and I said, ‘You better be Magic Johnson quick.’ ”

The residual agonies of the day were no less compelling. Izzo said he could “feel the tears of joy and the tears of sorrow at the same time” and told Lucas his return to the bench – wearing a boot on his foot – was appreciated in light of how much the coach has harped on his players to be better teammates. In the other locker room, Maryland’s Gary Williams had to console the mercurial Vasquez, whose career ended with this gut punch.

“Greiv plays with everything on his sleeve,” Williams said. “Unfortunately, there’s not enough people that do anything in life like that.”

There were other Sunday heroes who didn’t hit the final shots but played that way – as Izzo noted, “a lot of guys that grew. They’re all the same size, but hearts and heads are a lot bigger – in a positive way.”

Purdue coach Matt Painter addressed that sort of growth three weeks ago when Hummel was hurt, insisting “guys had to take it up a notch – and not just on Wednesdays and Saturdays (Big Ten game days) but every day.

“We talked about continuing to dream. Do you still want to win a Big Ten championship? Do you want to go to a Final Four? Why can’t we do that right now? We’re not going to do it if you stop dreaming.”

If you don’t give yourself the second chance no one wants to give you.