Cassius sheds a tear, finds rhythm, finds some peace
LAHAINA, Hawaii – Cassius Winston softly mentioned crying between Monday’s upset loss to Virginia Tech and Tuesday’s 28-point All-American performance, lifting Michigan State past a furious Georgia comeback 93-85 in the Maui Jim Maui Invitational.
That was all Tom Izzo, seated next to him at the post-game media session at the Lahaina Civic Center, needed to hear to speak more about how Winston is playing through a tragedy, the suicide death on Nov. 9 of his brother Zachary. Winston's reference was vague, but Izzo clarified it was in the locker room as the team was taking the floor against Georgia.
Izzo had limited his comments the past couple weeks out of respect for the family’s privacy. But Winston’s reference was his signal what he wanted to explain: How hard it has been on Cassius and parents, Reggie and Wendi.
“He’s been struggling, his mother has been struggling,” Izzo said. “It makes what I went through two years ago (the ESPN story on sexual assaults on Michigan State’s campus) ... We always try to make games or events life or death. This was life and death. And it’s hard.”
Izzo added he received a text at 4 a.m. today from Winston’s mother (Wendi), advising Izzo to tell her son to quit looking for her in the stands. The Maui games are the first ones his mother has attended since Zachary’s death. Maybe that helps explain Winston finishing the Virginia Tech loss with only seven points, two assists and three turnovers.
“I’ve been told by people that there’s going to be ups and downs,” Izzo said. “So if anybody tells me I’m making an excuse, there’s going to be a fistfight, because the facts do matter. They matter. And the fact is the best friend in his life lost his life. We’re struggling as a team, but he is struggling as a human being.”
“This isn’t going away. We’re just going to try to build on it as a family. And I’m going to listen to Tony Dungy (the Pro Football Hall of Fame coach) and Reggie Winston (Cassius’ father). I’m going to try my hardest to coach him back to normalcy, which means I have to be normal too. It’s the most difficult thing I’ve done.”
In fact, Izzo added later that what he went through with the ESPN story “is nothing” compared to this.
There may have been a moment when Winston couldn’t take the court to face Georgia, but no one would know it without Winston mentioning it and Izzo expanding upon it. Certainly there was no way to notice by the way he played.
Winston avoided the early foul trouble that plagued him against Virginia Tech while adding eight assists with only two turnovers to his season high. He was 10-of-16 from the field and 2-of-4 from three-point range.
Winston said this game felt the most like his play last year while making his vague reference to crying,
“It was a tough day, too,” he said. “I think I cried before the game and things like that. But once I got out there, I was able to find my rhythm, find my peace out there on the court and that was really good for me. Getting up and down (the court), just having that rhythm that I usually play with. I feel like this is the first time I had it in a while.”
The 6-foot-1 Winston may be small, but the Spartans needed his big heart to counter a staggering performance from Georgia freshman guard Anthony Edwards. Despite Aaron Henry often in his face on shots, Edwards exploded for 33 of his 37 points in the second half.
He sparked a Georgia rally that trimmed 61-33 deficit with 16:26 left in the game to just two points, 75-73, with 4:55 remaining.
Winston held the team together, handling the press and hitting six-of-six free throws down the stretch.
“Probably, if there was an all-decade team for point guards, you’re going to put Cassius on that,” said Georgia coach Tom Crean, a Michigan State assistant under Izzo on the Spartans’ 1999 Final Four team. “I know he’s only played six or seven games this year, but he beats you so many ways and he loves the pass.”
Crean added, “What Cassius has done is he’s become such a better shooter. I think his threes last year were 39 of 84 off the dribble. Now he’s able to do even more off the catch. He can do so many different things. His range has increased. He loves to pass. You over-help and he’s going to find the lob, he’s going to drop off. And when you got a guy like that that doesn’t predetermine what he’s going to do, that’s what makes him a special, special guard.”
The Spartans also got double-figure performances from Xavier Tillman with 15 points and 11 rebounds and Henry with 14 points.
Edwards (6-5, 225), a freshman from Atlanta who has been projected as high as the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NBA draft, caught the nation’s attention. After the game he was the No. 1 United States sports subject on twitter.
“You let a player like that get going and it’s very difficult to slow him down and it just feeds into everybody on the team,” Winston said. “So you’ve got to focus on getting rebounds, you can’t let them get second chances. You can’t turn the ball over. Things like that can keep the game in your hands as much as possible. Those are the type of things that we got to shore up in the end.”
And that's while they’re also coping with life-and-death for a basketball player and his family.
Tom Shanahan is publisher of Shanahan.report and author of Raye of Light.