| | By Rick Morrissey
Special to ESPN.com
The recipe has proven successful, so this should be pretty easy to follow.
Start with a liberal dose of veteran point guard, one with equal measures ability and heart. Add an experienced, sweet-shooting forward. Mix in another potential NBA player, some tough guys inside and a freshman rich in talent. Take a dash of head coach -- a very little head coach -- and stir.
See? No problem. Instant national championship.
Well, one problem. What Michigan State did last year in winning the national title was hard to do, not only in the accomplishment, but in having the ingredients all in the same place at the same time.
|  | | Does Frank Williams have the leadership needed in a championship point guard? |
Who is this year's Michigan State? How about this for an easy answer: Maybe nobody, at least in the Midwest.
What makes the Spartans a tough act to follow is in how the team was built and how it matured slowly over time. In another words, most of their players weren't ready for the NBA after a year or two of college ball. This evolved into a team loaded with talent and enough players who cared about each other and the task at hand.
It was corny, really, in this age of one goal, the goal of getting to the next level. Maybe that's the secret ingredient: corn.
"You've got to have more than one man to have that type of chemistry," Bradley coach Jim Molinari said. "They had dual leadership in Mateen Cleaves and Mo Peterson. I think Illinois has some of that potential. Maybe they can get it out of Cory Bradford and maybe somebody on the front line.
"But I don't know that I see yet what Michigan State had. They were a dominant team chemistry-wise and personality-wise. They were unbelievable. I don't see anyone coming out who has that."
Missouri? Too young. Notre Dame? Troy Murphy and who else? Plus, a new
coach. DePaul? Loaded with talent, but chemistry has been a big, big problem
for the Blue Demons.
How about Kansas? The Jayhawks surely are jacked that Roy Williams turned down North Carolina. Drew Gooden and Nick Collison are sophomores now.
But Eric Chenowith gives them size, not athleticism. And point guard Jeff
Boschee isn't Cleaves.
Molinari is probably right in that the team that most resembles Michigan State is Illinois. It makes sense for a number of reasons, but no more so than this: Three of the players on the team played at the same high school in Peoria, Ill. It's not a bad thing for chemistry when three of your key players -- point guard Frank Williams and forwards Sergio McClain and Marcus Griffin -- know each other like brothers.
If new coach Bill Self can somehow make himself heard and respected quickly, the Illini have a chance. That shouldn't be minimized. There seems to be a genuine affinity between Michigan State coach Tom Izzo and his players, and it's probably unrealistic for Self and his squad to have a lovefest right off the bat.
But the players seem to like him, despite the two-week boot camp he put them through earlier this year. On the last day, Self showed up in Army fatigues with his face painted. "We're going to war," he told his team.
"It was a terrible paint job, but it was cool," forward Lucas Johnson said. "He lightened the mood."
One of the things that Michigan State was able to do last season was play several different styles. The Spartans could run and they could pound inside. Under former coach Lon Kruger, who left to coach the Atlanta Hawks, the Illini played more halfcourt than his team might have wanted to play.
Self had his boot camp for a reason. The Illini will be a running team this season.
"Everybody says they want to do it, but sometimes, when fatigue sets in or whatever, we don't do it," he said. "We pace ourselves. We've got to get
out of the pace mode. We've got to be in an attack mode all the time."
This year's Michigan State team will have to find a way to replace Cleaves, Peterson and A.J. Granger. Sophomore Jason Richardson is a very gifted player, and Izzo has Zach Randolph, one of the top recruits in the country.
"We're more athletic than we've been in the past, and we can be better defensively," guard Charlie Bell said.
The next Michigan State? Maybe Michigan State.
Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Tribune is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
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