HISTORY LESSON: Detroit’s March Madness: The Moments That Never Get Old

I have called in sick — to school, to work, to whatever obligation stood in the way — for the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament almost every year, since the third grade. Twice, I didn’t, and I’m not proud of either. I follow high school hoops year-round, I’ve rehashed brackets at every bar I’ve been a regular at, and the tournament is the one week my wife has fully accepted she’s going to lose me to the television. I first watched with my grandfather, then my friends, and now with her: it’s my favorite part of the year. So, this column is personal. It’s not a ranking of the best moments: you can find that anywhere. These are the stories that have stuck with me, the ones I bring up in gyms and bars year-round, the ones that come back every March, without fail. There are great moments this column doesn’t cover, and I’ll hear about it; so consider this an invitation to argue.

Detroit has produced its fair share of NBA players: Spencer Haywood, George “the Ice Man” Gervin, Steve Smith, the list goes on. But it also produces tournament players, kids who seem to find another gear when the stakes are high, whose best moments have a way of becoming part of the permanent mythology of the sport. Some of those moments have ended in heartbreak. Some ended in triumph. Some are retold here.

The One Everyone Knows

You can’t tell Detroit’s March Madness story without starting in New Orleans on April 5, 1993. The Fab Five, the University of Michigan’s vaunted recruiting class, when they were in their sophomore season. The most celebrated and maybe the most debated recruiting class in college basketball history, led by two Detroiters, made it to the national championship game for the second straight year. With 11 seconds left, Michigan trailed North Carolina by two, Chris Webber of Detroit Country Day grabbed a defensive rebound, pushed the ball up the court, and called a time out that his team didn’t have. The resulting technical foul sealed the game.

That moment became an instant part of American sports folklore, replayed thousands of times in the decades since. Webber has spent much of his adult life grappling with it publicly.

Rose, who played at Southwestern High School under the legendary Perry Watson, was the beating heart of those teams. He led the Fab Five in scoring as a freshman, averaging over 17 points a game. He was the point guard, the talker, the connector. He and Webber had been friends since they were 12-years-old, and came up through rival programs in the same city, Webber at the private Detroit Country Day in Beverly Hills, Rose at the public Southwestern in the city. For some they were too brash, too bold, too Black. But they changed the way college basketball looked, sounded, and felt. But, in this day and age of NIL and the transfer portal, the fact that the Fab Five returned to the championship for a second year, reminds us of a bygone era.

A Continued Dynasty Discontinued

Eventually, the Fab Five would move on and Michigan continued their strong recruiting in Detroit. Flint, whose players I have left out of this article for geographic purposes, had also been a hot bed for basketball recruitment; and Michigan had their eyes on one of its best.

Here is what happened: Mateen Cleaves, the eventual two time all-American and the captain of Tom Izzo’s 2000 national championship team was on Michigan’s radar. In February of 1996, he made an official visit to Ann Arbor — but the trip went badly wrong when he ended up at a party in Detroit that included booster Ed Martin, who would eventually be at the center of one of the most damaging scandals in college basketball history. A car carrying Cleaves and several Michigan players (including Detroit’s Robert “Tractor” Traylor) flipped on the way back to Ann Arbor. The investigation that followed exposed Martin’s long-running financial relationships with Michigan players, triggered NCAA sanctions, cost Michigan Head Coach Steve Fisher his job and ultimately wiped the Fab Five’s Final Four appearances from the official record. Cleaves would ultimately choose Michigan State and would be followed by some of his best friends, creating the “Flintstones” and brining Tom Izzo the National Title. 

Detroit Country Day Produces Champions

Shane Battier took a different path than Webber. Where Webber was electric, Battier was fundamental. He went from Detroit Country Day, the same Beverly Hills private school that produced Webber, to Duke, where Mike Krzyzewski had exactly the right setting for everything Battier was. In 2001, he was the consensus national player of the year: Naismith Award, AP Player of the Year, the whole list. Duke beat Arizona for the championship.

Battier’s jersey hangs in the rafters at both his high school and at Cameron Indoor Stadium. He later won two NBA titles with the Miami Heat. The school that produced him and Webber has a reasonable claim to being the most decorated high school basketball program in Michigan history.

36 Points. Nine Threes. One Loss.

In 2003, Rickey Paulding of Detroit’s Renaissance High School put on one of the most spectacular individual performances in tournament history that – arguably – no one remembers. Playing for Missouri in a second-round game against Dwyane Wade and Marquette, Paulding scorched the net for 36 points and nine three-pointers, numbers that would dominate the headlines in any other game. He did it in a loss, and Wade went on to become a legend, so Paulding’s performance got filed away. It shouldn’t have been. Nine threes in a tournament game, in the early 2000s, in what amounted to a shootout against one of the most electrifying players the sport had ever seen, is a performance worth resurrecting.

Ford Field was Shaking

In 2009, the Final Four came to Ford Field. Michigan State, playing in front of a crowd that had effectively turned the building into a second home arena, beat Connecticut in the national semifinal. Durrell Summers, a guard from Detroit who had come up through Redford Covenant Christian, delivered one of the most thunderous dunks of the tournament, a fast-break slam over UConn’s Stanley Robinson that became the iconic image of the run. Jim Nantz declared that Ford Field was shaking. It was.

The following year, Summers and his fellow Detroit-area teammate Kalin Lucas, had arrived at Michigan State in the same recruiting class — were supposed to carry the Spartans to another run. Then, Lucas ruptured his Achilles in the second round against Maryland, and the tournament, for him, was over. Michigan State won that game without him. Then they won again. They made it all the way back to the Final Four for the second straight year, this time without one of their two best players. It is one of the great testament-to-a-program moments in Tom Izzo’s career, and one of the great “what if” questions in Michigan basketball history. What does that team do with a healthy Lucas in the Final Four?

A Walk-On Delivers

In 2019, Michigan State had its own appointment with Zion Williamson. Duke entered the Elite Eight as the overall No. 1 seed with arguably the most hyped college player in a generation. Magic Johnson — Michigan State’s most famous alumnus — was in the building to watch. Kenny Goins, a fifth-year senior from Warren Mott who had walked on to the program four years earlier, was about to give him something to cheer about.

Goins had missed his first four, three-point attempts in that game. During the timeout with 43 seconds left, Izzo’s staff drew up a play with two primary options: a lob to Xavier Tillman in the post, or a three for Cassius Winston off a screen. Goins was on the play — but as a decoy. Tillman kicked it out to him anyway, and Goins, standing at the top of the key with Williamson closing hard, didn’t hesitate. He rose up and buried it. Michigan State 68, Duke 67. Cassius Winston — out of Detroit’s University of Detroit Jesuit, Mr. Basketball in Michigan, the Big Ten Player of the Year — had delivered 20 points and 10 assists in a performance that carried the Spartans to the Final Four for the eighth time under Izzo.

The story of Goins, a kid who turned down Division I scholarship offers to pay his own way at Michigan State, then earned a scholarship in his second year and became a starter in his fifth, is exactly the kind of story the tournament was built for. 

The Season That Disappeared

Winston returned for his senior year in 2019-2020 as a unanimous preseason All-American — the only player in the country with such an honor. Then, in November, tragedy struck: his younger brother Zachary died suddenly, and Cassius played the very next day, scoring 17 points and receiving a standing ovation from the home crowd when he exited. He played the rest of that season carrying that weight, and played it beautifully.

Michigan State was 22-9 when the NCAA announced on March 12, 2020 that the tournament was canceled due to COVID-19. Winston, one of the best point guards in the country, never got his final March. Neither did seniors across every other program in the country. But, for a Detroit kid who had already lost so much in one year, the cancellation carried a particular sting. The “what if” of the 2020 tournament — for Winston, for a battle-tested Spartan team — belongs in the same conversation as any of the heartbreaks on this list. Some of the greatest March moments are the ones that never happened.

Mo Ager Puts the Dagger in Duke

In 2005, Michigan State walked into the Sweet 16 as a No. 5 seed against top-ranked Duke, a team led by JJ Redick — arguably the most recognizable college basketball player in the country that year. What followed was 78-68 proof that seedings don’t always mean what they’re supposed to. The defining image of the game was Mo Ager — from Detroit — catching a pass in transition and throwing down a thunderous dunk over Redick that took the wind out of Cameron’s favorite team. Ager later said it still surfaces on social media at least once a week. It should.

Detroit Mercy’s Long Shot

Not every Detroit tournament story runs through a major program. Rashaad Phillips, a 5-foot-9 guard from Detroit who played for the University of Detroit Mercy, led his mid-major to tournament victories in back-to-back seasons — the kind of achievement that requires a program to dramatically over-perform against the odds. Phillips was the engine of it, a small scorer who played bigger than his measurements suggested and delivered on the college game’s biggest occasion twice. Detroit Mercy’s tournament appearances don’t get catalogued alongside the Fab Five or the Ford Field Final Four, but they belong in the city’s basketball canon.

Darius Acuff Is Running Toward History

All these moments live in the past. The newest chapter just wrapped up.

Darius Acuff Jr., who grew up in Detroit and attended Cass Technical High School before transferring to IMG Academy, was maybe the most compelling player in the 2026 NCAA Tournament. As a freshman at Arkansas under John Calipari, he has been something close to unstoppable. He broke the record for most points scored by an SEC player in their first two tournament games in a single year, surpassing Pat Riley. Allen Iverson called him, “the next him” on social media. He already holds the first signature shoe deal — with Reebok — ever given to an NCAA men’s player while still in college.

Over the first two weeks of the tournament, Acuff shot up draft boards and is now considered a top 3 prospect. His run would ultimately end against top-ranked Arizona, but it remains another example of a Detroiter putting their fingerprints on March Madness. 

The University of Michigan Wolverines will take on the No. 2 seed UConn Huskies, tonight, for the 2025-26 NCAA Basketball Championship.