Walton focuses on winning it all

 EAST LANSING, Mich. - Travis Walton knows what he's supposed to say, so he says it.

The Final Four is something to cherish, but first of all it is a time to put all that excitement aside and take care of business.  Play now, celebrate later.

But the insiders know there's more below the surface. Michigan State's senior floor leader from Lima Senior has lived, breathed, eaten and slept - in the four or five hours a night he sleeps - little else but the Final Four during the Spartans' run in the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

"I live with the guy. He doesn't stop talking about the Final Four," his roommate, senior post player Goran Suton said after a practice earlier this week.

Coach Tom Izzo described the Final Four as being a "battle cry" all year for Walton. So much so that he advised his senior guard to tone down the talk about it.

"I was like, ‘Don't bring it up, don't bring it up,' because I didn't want the other guys to have all that pressure on them," Izzo said.

Michigan State (30-6) will take on Connecticut (31-4) at 6 p.m. Saturday in an NCAA tournament national semifinal.

That trip to Ford Field in Detroit means that every player recruited by Izzo in his 14 seasons who stayed four years has gotten to the Final Four.

Michigan State has gone to the Final Four in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005 and won it all in 2000.

Walton, a 6-foot, 2-inch guard, who averages 5.3 points a game, was the Big Ten's Defensive Player of the Year this season and has been named to the league's All-Defensive team the last three years.

Defense and leadership are what he has been known for, to the point that he has been compared with tough, intense leaders of the past at Michigan State, like Mateen Cleaves, and called a coach on the floor.

Some of Walton's coach-on-the-floor reputation comes from his marathon consumption of game films.

To prepare for Michigan State's regional semifinal against Kansas last week, he watched eight films of the Jayhawks. That is not unusual for Walton.

"He has watched more film than any coach," Suton said. "He knows better what the other team is going to do than any two coaches. Certain people rise to the occasion. He's rising up to the pressure."

Asked how late he's staying up watching film this week, Walton said, "I'm going to rest next week."

"You have to cherish the moment, seize the moment, live in the moment," he said.  "But once you step on this court in the Breslin (for practice) or wherever we're supposed to go, the outside things don't matter. Nothing else matters.

"I talked to Mateen (Cleaves) and he said the first time he went to the Final Four he was celebrating, he was jumping up and down. The second time he went he took more of a business approach."

Part of the reason for all the talk about taking care of business might come from the effect Walton knows he has on his teammates.

"You keep your same approach. You don't want to get anybody feeling too nervous but you also want to get them to a point of ‘Don't enjoy this too much,' " he said.

"I'm not going to do too much and get to yelling and get out of my comfort zone and get them out of their comfort zone. But at the same time I'm going to talk to them and remind them the Final Four is not our goal, a national championship is our main goal."

Walton's approach to the Final Four, like his approach to basketball in general, sounds very similar to Izzo's.

"It's a once in a lifetime thing that has happened to me five times," Izzo said earlier this week about returning to the Final Four. "So I feel incredibly blessed. But as great as getting there is, it doesn't even compare to that one shining moment night (winning the NCAA title). And I plan on getting there again."

Walton scored a career-high 18 points in Michigan State's 74-69 win over Southern California in the second round of the tournament and has continued to provide defense and leadership during the postseason.

"He's been unbelievable, the best leader I've been around. He's the most self-motivated person I've ever seen," Suton said.

And, away from crowds, away from the television cameras, at home Suton sees something else - just how much Walton wants to win an NCAA championship.

"We look each other right in the eye and say, ‘We've got to get this,' " Suton said.