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College basketball: March Madness 2005
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Two in the Final Four about as good as it gets
East Lansing has a lot to scream about with both Spartan squads in the national spotlight.
Associated Press
Published March 31, 2005
EAST LANSING, Mich. - Rob Dare and his friends crowded around a TV, screaming as Michigan State competed for a spot in the Final Four.
The students weren't watching the men's team, however. For the first time, Dare and his buddies were tuned in to cheer on the Spartan women.
Michigan State will have its men's and women's teams in the Final Four this weekend and Dare, as much as it surprises him, will be interested in both games.
"Everybody follows the men around here, but now people are jumping on the women's bandwagon, me included," the sophomore said Wednesday. "I was really impressed with them against Stanford. Me and my friends couldn't believe how good they could shoot. Maybe we should've started following them earlier."
Michigan State has gone hoops crazy, a fact that could be seen and heard on and around campus.
Merchandise was hawked on street corners under makeshift tents, and congratulatory messages could be seen on businesses' marquees.
A green and white Spartans blanket attached to a flag pole flapped in the wind in the back of a pickup truck on the eastern edge of campus.
As if a partly cloudy, 70-degree day wasn't enough to create a buzz in the winter-weary college town, two Final Four-bound basketball teams provided an extra boost of excitement.
For the past two weeks, Michigan State president Lou Anna Simon has crisscrossed the country to give equal time to the Spartans in both the men's and women's NCAA tournaments.
There's no rest for Simon now.
"It's a great problem to have," Simon said in interview a few minutes after the women's team beat Stanford on Tuesday night. "It's going to be a little easier on me this weekend because the sites will be closer together, and the games don't conflict.
"I can't wait to get to the pep rallies and other events we have planned before each game."
Simon will watch the men play North Carolina on Saturday in St. Louis, then travel 250 miles to Indianapolis for the women's game against Tennessee on Sunday.
If both Michigan State teams pull off upsets, Simon will be back in St. Louis on Monday for the men's national championship before wrapping up her whirlwind tour Tuesday night in Indianapolis for the women's title game.
Just six schools have sent both men's and women's teams to the Final Four, but the feat has now happened four years in a row.
Georgia was the first to do it, in 1983, and Duke followed in 1999 before Oklahoma, Texas, Connecticut and now Michigan State had two teams advance to the semifinals from 2002-05. Last year, the Huskies were the first to have both men's and women's teams win national championships in the same season.
Though the women are a top-seeded team and the men are a fifth-seeded squad, both have had to scramble to win some games en route to the Final Four.
The men beat Kentucky in double overtime on Sunday in a regional final, and the women escaped the second round with a 61-59 win over Southern California. Both will face traditional powerhouses in the Final Four: North Carolina for the men and Tennessee for the women.
[Last modified March 31, 2005, 01:28:16]
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