Thank you Morris Peterson!!!

Mo Pete was one of my favorite basketball players growing up. If you'll remember Mo Pete was left-handed (as am I) so I had a special connection with him. Today at 3.40pm he is getting his jersey retired by Michigan State, and the bloggers in the MSU blogosphere have been talking about this for a week or two, detailing their favorite "Mo Pete moments."

My favorite moment was in 2000 in his senior year, in the regional finals (the Elite 8), Michigan State played Iowa State. The game decided who went to the Final Four, and was a competition between the best team and the hottest team in the tourney. With two minutes to go and down a bucket, State runs a backdoor play for Mo to get the alley-oop.

Joe Rexrode of the Lansing State journal captures the conversation between Coach Izzo, Mateen Cleaves, and Mo Pete, before the play, as going like this:

Peterson: “Coach, they’re overplaying me, I can go backdoor.”
Izzo: “I’m not doing that with two minutes left.”
Cleaves: “Come on!”
Izzo: “OK, fine. But if you hit the tuba player with that pass, I’m going to kill you.”

Brilliant!!!

It goes off without a hitch, and they take the momentum and the game. Oh how I miss the Flintstones!