U2 to play East Lansing in June

BY STEVE BYRNE
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

U2 is going green.

The famed Irish band announced early this morning that its current tour will include a stop at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing on June 30. Ticket details are still to be announced, according to the group's Web site, U2.com, and the tour's promoter, Live Nation.

The band has been on the road playing stadiums worldwide since July, but its initial North American leg did not include a Michigan visit. The band last played here at the Palace of Auburn Hills in November 2005.

Spartan Stadium, which has a capacity of 75,000 for football games, has infrequently hosted major music events. The last big-time rock concert held there was a Rolling Stones date in 1994.

The quartet does have a small connection to MSU. On its second North American tour, it played the popular campus bar Dooley's in December 1981.

U2's 360 Tour was so named for a unique 360-degree set design that provides an unobstructed view for the entire audience.

The set includes an 164-foot-high structure dubbed the Claw, a cabana-like monolith that looms over the entire set, houses speakers on all sides and features a 14,000-square-foot video system.

The full list of tour dates is available at http://www.u2.com/tour/

The Road Starts Here. The Road Starts Now...

Believe it or not Spartans, It's Basketball Season. The Road to The Final Four & last year started as a dream and ended 17 points shy of a National Title. Lace up them hightops - Here we go again.

The first game is tonight and if you can't find it on your TV set, go to www.ESPN360.com where you can watch it for free online.

GO GREEN!

Hangin' In Izzo's Basement

When the topic of QBs comes up tomorrow

There has been a lot of talk about that other QB who lost to Michigan State last week. When the topic comes up, be sure to know your facts about who the best passing team is in The Big Ten.

MSU Stats to Chew On...

Total Passing Yards = MSU ranks #8 in the nation, #1 in The Big Ten

Passing Touchdowns = MSU ranks #4 in the nation, #1 in The Big Ten

Passing 1st Downs = MSU ranks #6 in the nation, #2 in The Big Ten

Longest Pass Play = MSU ranks #3 in the nation, #1 in The Big Ten

Passing Yards per game = MSU ranks #1 in The Big Ten

GO GREEN.

Yeah, This isn't a Rivalry.

Stats of note following the 2009 MSU v UM game :

Final Score :
MSU 26
UM 20

Yards Total :
UM 251
MSU 417

Rushing Total :
UM 28
MSU 197

Rush Average Yards Per Carry :
UM 1
MSU 4

Rushing :
Kirk Cousins (MSU QB) 75 Yards
Denard Robinson (UM Rush Specialist QB) -9 Yards
Brandon Minor (UM RB) 2 Yards

Has anybody seen Sam McGuffie?

GO GREEEEEEEN.

FIRST-AND-10 (what you need to know about the MSU-Notre Dame matchup)

Saturday’s game marks the 73rd meeting between Michigan State and Notre Dame. Eight of the last 10 games in the series have been decided by 10 points or less. The visiting team has won seven of the last eight meetings, with Michigan State posting a 23-7 victory in Spartan Stadium last September. Overall, the Spartans have won nine of the last 12 meetings, including six-straight victories in Notre Dame Stadium. The six-game winning streak marks the longest run by an Irish opponent in the 78-year history of Notre Dame Stadium.

SPARTANS RANK SECOND IN ALL-TIME VICTORIES vs. NOTRE DAME

Michigan State ranks second among opponents in all-time victories (27) over Notre Dame. Only Southern Cal (33) has posted more wins over the Irish than the Spartans.

• Eight of the last 10 games in the series have been decided by 10 points or less. The visiting team has won seven of the last eight meetings, with Michigan State posting a 23-7 victory in Spartan Stadium last September. Overall, the Spartans have won nine of the last 12 meetings, including six-straight victories in Notre Dame Stadium. The six-game winning streak marks the longest run by an Irish opponent in the 78-year history of Notre Dame Stadium.

• Michigan State ranks second among opponents in all-time victories (27) over Notre Dame. Only Southern Cal (33) has posted more wins over the Irish than the Spartans.

• Since 1949, the winner of the Michigan State-Notre Dame game has been presented the Megaphone Trophy, sponsored jointly by the Detroit alumni clubs of both schools.

• The Michigan State-Notre Dame series began 112 years ago in 1897, making it one of the 27 oldest rivalries in college football. It also ranks as one of only three rivalries – joining Army-Navy and Auburn-Georgia Tech – that does not involve either intrastate or current conference rivals.

• Michigan State has compiled a 31-12 record (.721) in games played against non-conference opponents since 1999, including an 8-4 mark under Mark Dantonio. The Spartans have won 14 of their last 19 non-league games.

• Fifth-year senior Blair White leads the Spartans in receptions (16), receiving yards (267) and touchdown catches (2). White ranks second in the Big Ten in both receptions (8.0 per game) and receiving yards (133.5 per game). He also is listed among the NCAA’s Top 10 in both receiving yards (No. 6) and receptions (No. 7). White recorded his second-straight 100-yard receiving game with seven catches for 105 yards against Central Michigan. He had a career-high nine receptions for 162 yards and two TDs in the season opener against Montana State.

• Sophomore quarterback Kirk Cousins leads the Big Ten and ranks sixth in the NCAA in passing efficiency with his 186.7 rating. In two starts, Cousins has completed 23-of-35 throws (.657) for 347 yards and four touchdowns. He hit 13-of-18 passes for 164 yards and a score in MSU’s 29-27 loss to Central Michigan. With the score tied at 20, Cousins went 5-for-5 for 59 yards on a 13-play, 80-yard drive as the Spartans took a 27-20 lead on his 35-yard TD strike to B.J. Cunnigham with 7:33 left in the game.

• Junior linebacker Greg Jones leads the Big Ten and ranks third in the NCAA, averaging 14.5 tackles per game. Jones matched his career high with 15 tackles against Central Michigan. He has recorded double-fi gure tackles in nine consecutive games, averaging 12.8 stops during the streak. Jones also is listed among the Big Ten leaders in sacks (tied for first with 1.5 for 11 yards) and tackles for loss (tied for third with 4 for 19 yards).

• Lou Groza Award candidate Brett Swenson leads the Big Ten in kick scoring (10.0 points per game) and ranks third (tied) in fi eld goals (2.0 made per game). He leads the team in scoring with 20 points, converting all four field-goal and all eight extra-point attempts. Swenson ranks first among NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision active leaders in scoring, with 296 career points. His 56 career field goals rank second among all-active NCAA FBS kickers and third in MSU history. Swenson has made 74 consecutive PATs.

THE LAST MEETING –

Sept. 20, 2008, in East Lansing, Mich.: Javon Ringer rushed for 201 yards and two touchdowns on 39 attempts, carrying Michigan State to a 23-7 win over Notre Dame. Ringer became the fi rst player to run for 200 yards in consecutive games in Michigan State history. The Spartans took a 13-0 lead into the fourth quarter, then sealed the victory by handing off to Ringer on all seven plays of a 77-yard drive he capped with a TD with 2:16 left. The Irish turned the ball over three times and missed two field goals, hurting their chances of starting 3-0 for the first time since 2002 and the second time in 12 years. Jimmy Clausen was 24-of-41 for 242 yards with a TD and two interceptions in the fi rst half, one of which was in the end zone on a play that was overturned by a video review. Clausen was sacked three times - after not being sacked in the fi rst two games - and was hurried and hit numerous times. Michigan State shut down the Irish’s running game and the sacks led to them fi nishing with 16 yards rushing and seven points. Michael Floyd caught a 26-yard TD pass early in the fourth quarter, getting Notre Dame within six points, after fumbling at the Michigan State 20 early in the third. The Spartans got off to a good start, limiting Notre Dame to minus-5 yards on its fi rst two drives and kicking a fi eld goal on their opening possession. Clausen’s up-for-grabs pass in the end zone to a double-covered Duval Kamara was ripped away by safety Otis Wiley on Notre Dame’s third drive. It was originally ruled incomplete but overturned by replay. Clausen threw another poor pass in the second quarter and it was picked off by Wiley at the Notre Dame 22, setting up Ringer’s fi rst TD. His highlight of the day was a 63-yard run that set up his second TD.

THE LAST MEETING IN NOTRE DAME STADIUM –

Sept. 22, 2007, in Notre Dame, Ind.: Brian Hoyer threw four touchdown passes and Javon Ringer rushed for 144 yards to lead Michigan State to a 31-14 victory over Notre Dame. Michigan State (4-0) became the fi rst opponent to win six in a row at Notre Dame Stadium. The Spartans blew the game open with a pair of third-quarter TDs, a 16-yard catch by Mark Dell and a 30-yard catch by Kellen Davis on a fourth-and-2 play to make it 31-14. Davis also had a 3-yard TD catch and Devin Thomas had a 7-yard scoring catch. Notre Dame finally scored its fi rst offensive touchdown of the season on a 1-yard run by Travis Thomas to cap a 9-yard drive in the first quarter. The score was setup by a Michigan State fumble. Hoyer was 11-of-24 passing for 135 yards as the Spartans amassed 354 yards total offense. Jehuu Caulcrick added 83 yards rushing for the Spartans. Jimmy Clausen was 7-of-13 passing for 53 yards for Notre Dame, while Evan Sharpley, who played the fourth quarter, went 4-of-7 passing for 33 yards. The Irish, who had given up 23 sacks through their first three games, were sacked four times by the Spartans. MSU defensive end Jonal Saint-Dic sacked Clausen for a 17-yard loss and stripped the ball from the quarterback in the second quarter.

Rich Rodriguez knows the gravity of U-M’s situation

August 31, 2009

By DREW SHARP
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

Rich Rodriguez looked like a beaten man — and the season hasn’t started yet.

“There’s nothing there,” he told me Monday, regarding an impending investigation into alleged wrongdoing in his program.

“There’s nothing there,” he said, staring down and slowly shaking his head. “It’s disheartening because you want to create a program where the kids are self-reliant.”

Apparently there is crying in football.

With his program under attack, Rodriguez seemed overwhelmed at his weekly news conference when pressed to defend his actions and integrity. Words lodged in his throat. And suddenly the coaching machine looked human. He looked sincere. He looked scared.

But saying he loves his players won’t save Rodriguez if U-M’s internal investigation validates player allegations raised in an exclusive Free Press investigation.

Rodriguez knows he’s in trouble. NCAA investigations are the antithesis of the American criminal justice system. You’re guilty until proven innocent.

Overworking players through the vagueness of what’s ruled mandatory and what’s ruled voluntary isn’t as sexy as academic fraud or as damning as boosters providing players with luxury SUVs and baked goods with one-hundred dollar bills as frosting.

But these accusations cut to the core of the NCAA’s biggest hypocrisy — the idyllic illusion of the student-athlete, at least as it pertains to football. And that should be Michigan’s greatest worry at the onset of the any inquisition.

The NCAA might have no alternative but to stain the sainted image of Michigan football if it means protecting the greater fallacy of major college football as a part-time academic diversion.

Football is a full-time job at Michigan. It’s a full-time job at Michigan State.

But it took a possibly poisonously divisive Michigan football family to finally bring this pretense into the national spotlight. Eventually, the NCAA might need to weigh the merits of tossing the football program with the most victories under the wheels of its morality bus.

Don’t bore me with justifications that everybody fudges the 20-hour-a-week or that every coach has somebody from his staff monitoring off-season workouts that are supposed to be at the discretion of the players.

How many times have we told the cop who pulled us over for speeding that everybody on the freeway was motoring at least 10 miles over the speed limit? Yet you got caught and got the ticket.

If it’s proven that Rodriguez broke NCAA rules, regardless of their practicality, Michigan has no alternative but to fire him — or risk exposing an internal hypocrisy of wanting to win the self-proclaimed “Michigan way.”

They can’t have it both ways.

Contact DREW SHARP: 313-223-4055 or dsharp@freepress.com.

Spartans land Detroit Crockett star Tony Lippett

Spartans land Detroit Crockett star Tony Lippett

BY MATT DORSEY
FREE PRESS SPECIAL WRITER

Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio got some good news Thursday when Detroit Crockett star Tony Lippett committed to the Spartans.

The 6-foot-3, 185-pounder will play wide receiver for the Green and White.

Lippett has played quarterback the last two years for Crockett and put up very respectable numbers as a passer and a rusher. But catching the ball is where his future is most promising. Lippett grew up playing receiver in the Detroit Police Athletic League, so the transition to the position should be an easy one.

The last few weeks, Lippett has been wowing scouts and recruiting analysts at regional events. In April, he attended the Badger Sports 7-on-7 tournament in Columbus, Ohio. That event featured all-star teams from Midwestern states competing against each other. Lippett was one of the most productive wideouts there, often the go-to receiver for Team Michigan.

A few weeks later, Lippett attended the Nike camp at Penn State. That one features many of the best players from the Midwest and the East Coast. Rivals.com national recruiting analyst Mike Farrell had this to say after seeing Lippett in action: “He was outstanding in drills, his feet were great, he ran good routes. I thought he was the best wide receiver out here."

In addition to his exceptional size, Lippett is very fast. He has clocked a 100-meter time of 10.8 seconds and routinely runs the 40-yard dash in the 4.5-second range.

Lippett's commitment to the Spartans fulfills coach Dantonio's desire to recruit the state -- and especially the Detroit area -- as thoroughly as possible. Spartan assistant coach and Detroit native Dan Enos served as the primary recruiter of Lippett.

Lippett becomes the second commitment to Michigan State for the class of 2010, joining Traverse City linebacker Max Bullough.

Matt Dorsey is a recruiting analyst for spartanmag.com and rivals.com

How to Drown Your Final Four Sorrows

How to Drown Your Final Four Sorrows

THE SPARTINI

A drink recipe by PMY

Olive Juice (for the green)
4 oz. Skyy Vodka (for the white)
4 olives on skewer (for final four)
One drop each blood, sweat and tears

Shake, Serve, Drink

(Note: for all your gin drinkers out there,
sub lime for the green and gin for the white)

SpartyOn Spartans!

A Game of Survival for Michigan State Center Goran Suton

April 2, 2009
A Game of Survival for Michigan State Center

By JOE LAPOINTE New York Times

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The family photograph from 10 years ago shows 13-year-old Goran Suton and his older brother, Darijan, playing basketball outside their home near Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The backboard built by their grandfather Nikola has their names painted on its bare wood. What the picture does not show is the overgrown field of tall grass and weeds nearby where the loose balls sometimes rolled.

The boys did not chase them there for fear of land mines left from the civil war of the 1990s, which forced the family from its home for seven years. “Our grandfather would say, ‘Please don’t go there, I’ll get the ball,’ ” Darijan Suton said.

Goran Suton said: “We’d beg him not to. He’d still do it. Thank God he didn’t step on a mine.” Later, the men who cleared the mines found three live ones in that same field. “Very close,” Darijan Suton said.

A year later, the family left Europe as refugees to join relatives in Lansing, Mich. The grandfather stayed behind. Goran enrolled at Everett High School, not realizing that Magic Johnson had played there in the 1970s before moving on to Michigan State.

Goran, who had played organized basketball in Bosnia, was rediscovered by his new classmates on a nearby playground. “They went to the basketball coaches and said, ‘Hey, there’s this tall white kid who’s got some moves,’ ” Darijan said.

As Goran Suton’s first decade in America nears its end, he is even taller, at 6-foot-10, and is making more moves on more prestigious courts. As the starting center for Michigan State, he will play this weekend at Ford Field in Detroit in the Final Four of the N.C.A.A. tournament.

In the Spartans’ first four tournament games, Suton has played the best basketball of his career. Last weekend he was the most valuable player of the Midwest regional. But in Saturday’s semifinal, Suton’s opposite center will be Hasheem Thabeet of Connecticut.

If the 7-foot-3 Thabeet and the favored Huskies vanquish the Spartans, it will end a magical run at Magic Johnson’s old college. But if Suton and the Spartans prevail, the late-blooming center and his teammates will advance to the championship game on Monday night.

“The guy is a monster,” Suton said of Thabeet. “You have to be smart about it. Keep him away from the basket. Hopefully, get him in foul trouble. It’s a challenge. I’ve been challenged the past four games in this tournament. I’m going to take this challenge.”

It is hardly the biggest challenge of Suton’s young life. When war broke out in the former Yugoslavia, the family fled to Serbia because Suton’s mother was Serbian and Christian Orthodox and his father was Croatian and Christian Catholic.

At that time of ethnic cleansing, people were killing and dying over nationality and religion. “I’ve seen some pretty graphic things,” Suton said. “People walking without legs. What happened over there was a disaster. It’s a tragedy. You just try to move on.”

When peace came, Suton said he helped a cousin search for his father. They had heard he might have died in a mass murder. They went to a large tent, where families looked at bones.

“It smelled so bad there I almost vomited,” Suton said. They never located the remains. After the family emigrated, Suton quickly learned English, adapted to American customs, led Everett to a state championship and became an American citizen.

He followed Johnson’s path to the nearby university, but his college coach, Tom Izzo, was not always pleased with Suton’s intensity. Even after Suton lost 20 pounds of junk-food weight, Izzo complained about his focus and effort.

“The live-and-die of a game usually isn’t the same for people that have seen life and death,” Izzo said. In some ways, Izzo has said, he has learned as much from Suton as Suton has learned from him.

But Izzo also said Suton told him that he wanted the coach to yell at him when his performance lagged. “Some people need to be pushed,” Izzo said. “I just want him to work harder every single minute on the court.”

Suton agreed. “It’s something that works for me,” he said of Izzo’s demanding ways. “I seem to respond. I don’t think anybody’s going to run as fast on the court as if somebody was shooting behind them. At times, I need a motivator and a screamer.”

It certainly worked in this, his senior season and fifth year at Michigan State, as Suton led the Big Ten in rebounding. In the tournament, Suton leads the Spartans in scoring with 14.3 points a game and in rebounding with 11.5.

Against Louisville in the regional final, Suton scored 19 points and hit three of three shots from 3-point range, the most of his career. Even then, however, Suton’s coach and teammates had to urge Suton to shoot.

Guard Travis Walton, Suton’s close friend and roommate, was one of them. Walton said Suton, whose nickname is G, sometimes lacks what is called, in figurative terms, a killer instinct.

“G is a happy person,” Walton said. “There is a kind of excitement and joy to his face all the time.” Izzo agreed, saying, “You won’t find a better kid, a better student, a better person, a better teammate.” Izzo also has called Suton a Larry Birdish rebounder.

Although not a great leaper, he is instinctive about positioning. With good peripheral vision, he passes well. His deft footwork comes from playing soccer in his native country. And his rebounding belies certain stereotypes about European players.

“Coaches have told me European players are usually soft, they spend their time outside, they don’t rebound,” Suton said. “You can’t make a statement about a whole continent.”

Suton’s good-natured bearing does not mean he shrugs off failure on the court. Early in his freshman season, in the Maui Invitational, the Spartans played Gonzaga in a game that lasted three overtimes.

With 4.6 seconds left in the third overtime and the Spartans down by a point, Suton missed a layup that could have won the game. Instead, Gonzaga got the ball back and scored two more points to win, 109-106.

“That still hurts, that will never stop,” Suton said of his missed layup. “I remember crying my butt off, feeling like a loser, and I lost everything in one of the greatest games in college basketball history. That’s something that’s always going to stick.”

If that was his worst moment in basketball, what was the best? “This is it right now,” he said. “I don’t think I’d get to play in front of 70,000 people if I’d stayed in Bosnia. I’m going to get my degree. Things are going well right now.”

Regarding the unusual trajectory of his life, Suton said: “I’ve seen both sides of the world, life and death. Basketball is something I love. There is a difference between basketball and stepping on a land mine.” His world, he said, is “a joy — it’s just a joy.”