Trivia Friday

First, let's deal with winners' questions that I'm falling behind in answering.

    Easy E, at some point in the future I'll have nice, thorough bios on the former players you requested. We will track them down. As for last week's winner, Rocky asked me to analyze football recruits by high school for the past decade (or 20 or five years). I chose five, plus this year's verbal commitments, because time is surprisingly short for this time of year.
    The following is a list of the schools that provided multiple MSU players dating back to the 2004 class (John L.'s highest-ranked class, you might remember, which eventually was gutted by defections and off-the-field trouble). I also included all Detroit recruits in that time, and you'll notice that six of the nine were recruited by Mark Dantonio's staff.

Totals
Birmingham Brother Rice 3 (2008, 2006 and 2005)
Lake Orion High 2 (2008, 2005)
Flint Carman-Ainsworth 2 (2007, 2005)
Canton (Ohio) GlenOak 2 (2004, 2005)
The Hun School in New Jersey 2 (2004, 2005)
Warren G. Harding High in Warren, Ohio 2 (2007, 2005)
Detroit Renaissance 2 (2009)
Detroit Southeastern 2 (2008)
Detroit DePorres 2 (2004)
Detroit Denby (2008)
Detroit Country Day (2007)
Detroit Henry Ford (2004)

    Brother Rice, of course, is a football factory. The increased emphasis on Detroit is apparent here. Ohio will continue to be a huge priority. If there's an "MSU school" out there, it might be Farmington Hills Harrison, which provided Mark Dell in 2007. Harrison has been very good to MSU over the years (John Miller, Mill Coleman, Drew Stanton).

     And now for a final trivia question before this blog goes silent for a few days and I go to Virginia on vacation. I really think I've got you this time.

    * A three-parter. Alan Anderson's knee injury in the 2005 regional final left him visibly wobbly in the Final Four game against North Carolina a week later. Name the Kentucky player who inadvertently hurt Anderson, the specific type of injury and the UNC player who benefited most from the injury.

    Whoever gets the correct answers first, leave your question and I'll get to it when I return on Thursday, July 10. And for those of you who have asked, I will come with some hoops player progress updates as the summer advances, along with a five-day series on the MSU athletic department and its financial challenges (July 13-17) that I think you'll find interesting.

    One last thing: If you haven't seen it already, don't miss this story on Lupe Izzo.

Comments

[Chris]

Ramel Bradley, Strained Right Knee, Jawad Williams

[green lady]

P.Sparks, strained right knee, Rashad McCants

[DSJ]

If you're counting noses of guys who signed letters of intent to MSU on a football scholarship, then you have to think about Lansing Sexton, too.

I don't have any source material in front of me, but here's a partial list off the top of my head:

Dominick Brown (even if he never played, he did sign a LOI)

James Moore

Howard Triplett

Micajah Reynolds (not yet signed, of course)

Shawn Foster

Octavis Long

Well, that's all I can think of, although surely I've forgotten about a lineman or two.

I can't think of other schools that have sent so many kids to MSU since I began following Spartan football during the Muddy days.

[Dan B]

I'll guess Rajon Rondo, Strained right knee and Marvin Williams.

[cbakes]

Kalenna Aziubuke (sorry about the spelling), strained right knee, Jawad Williams

[jeff]

chuck hayes, right menicus, jawad williams

[Rob]

State is playing Western next year at Ford Field?! What an incredible waste of a home game. All that campus atmosphere (not to mention revenues for East Lansing businesses) lost. Hollis is carrying this just a little too far.

[West Coast Steve]

Rob's right, Ford Field doesn't do much for E.L. businesses, but showing huge numbers of Detroit alums and local high school coaches and recruits what a fantastic program MSU is has enormous value. As a G.R. native, I think it's important to consider Van Andel Arena too intermittently. There have to be tens of thousands of alums there too, and a history of quality players to pursue (Neitzel, Naymick, and Austin Thornton, our redshirt freshman, for example).

[Rob]

No West Coast Steve.....this is for FOOTBALL!!!!

[Rob]

Giving up the gate for a crowd of 75,000 at Spartan Stadium for only a portion of the gate in a 65,000-seat stadium. Not to mention all of the concessions, parking, etc. I sure hope they (tickets@msu.edu) have it wrong.

[Chris]

OK, who will be the next baseball coach and when will he be named?

[cbakes]

Kelenna Azubuike, torn right meniscus, Jawad Williams

[stone]

Joe,
Can you clear up this Nick Perry noise that is out there? What his status is, and what that might mean for where he might end up playing college football.

[Michael Motta]

Steve's point remains (sans Van Andel) for football even if he thought it was basketball. It might even be more pivotal for football to get its name out in Detroit than it is for basketball at this point. I agree it's marketing b.s. though - one of the unsavory things that's a decent means. There are an awful lot of those in life unfortunately.

On the Lupe Izzo story, why in the heck is that story confined to the Greater Lansing Woman? How many AAU boys would ever even think of clicking on Greater Lansing Woman to learn something that we all know isn't just about Lupe but it's also about MSU basketball (mostly because she's partly about MSU basketball)? Yeah, put it in GLW, but put it in the sports page too! This is another marketing issue, but it's a much more savory marketing possibility than is playing a game at Ford Field rather than at Spartan Stadium.

A nice story like the one on Lupe is just the sort of extra edge in recruiting that we need when we're basically neck in neck with the cream of the crop basketball schools. I guess it's not the LSJ's responsibility to help MSU basketball, but even if you look at it in terms of profits, MSU basketball greatness sells papers and produces website hits!

Joe did his part for this anyway.

[313Spartan]

Hey DSJ...don't forget about Matt Beard at Center...He was a Big Red and I believe he was an academic all american at State.

[Joe Rexrode]

cbakes got the right combination of correct answers, just in case anyone else was going to take a guess. Congrats, cbakes.

[mrdubbs]

Dominick Brown did get some playing time with the Spartans before his injury and transfer to Northern Iowa. Matt Beard had a very successful career as a Spartan. One other Big Red that played at State was Matt Branson. I am not sure if he was on scholarship or if he was a walk on.

[Curt Peterson]

I heard that they hadn't worked out yet who was going to be th "home team" for the game at Ford Field. If we ended up being the "away team" it would be a really good thing because it would give us a "home game" without it being counting at a home game so there would be the same amount in East Lansing! Let's hope thats the way they will work it out.

[db]

On a different note, I had been hearing that Korie Lucious's injury was minor, but I just read that he can't participate in full contact for another two months. He had a torn rotator cuff operated on that he said he suffered in 8th grade. Hopefully this does not put him too far behind.