Geography aside, these teams took the long way around to the Final Four

The Final Four road ends here, in Motor City, in a stadium named after one of the Big Three.

Michigan State (30-6) “hosts” Connecticut (31-4) today at Ford Field and Villanova (30-7) takes on North Carolina (32-4).

Distance traveled to get here:

Connecticut: 746 miles.

North Carolina: 701.

Villanova: 572.

Michigan State: 92.

It’s been a long trip. Michigan State Coach Tom Izzo lost his voice on the way.

“It’s lack of sleep,” he said this week. “That’s something you don’t get much of this time of year, and why would you want any?”

His Spartans are the sentimental favorites as the what-do-you-know? hosts of this event, representing a state crushed by home foreclosures and economic despair. The team’s green and white colors have become a rallying cry.

“It’s cool to know that you are the hometown favorite,” Michigan State freshman forward Draymond Green said.

The first game against Connecticut is not going to be fair. Ford Field, which holds more than 70,000, will be stuffed with Spartans fans. More than 20,000 showed up for Friday’s dress rehearsal practice.

This is Izzo’s fifth Final Four. His 2000 team won the national title. But there is nothing like playing at home, for everything you’ve worked for, with a chance to make people in the state feel a little bit better.

Izzo gathered his players before practice at Ford Field and told them to drink it all in.

He said, “Look around, guys, because there are 339 teams that wish they were standing here.”

Izzo said, “That’s what life’s all about, memory making.”

Great memories, of course, are better than disappointing ones.

“If they don’t look, I’ll be disappointed,” he said. “If they take too long a look, I’ll kill them.”

Connecticut’s trip has been difficult for different reasons. From day one, they were one of the favorites to get here and, here they are. But none of it has been easy. For Jim Calhoun, who had his third battle with cancer last summer, his third Final Four has been his toughest. His teams won national titles in 1999 and 2004, but a third, this year, might mean the most. Calhoun, suffering from dehydration, missed the first game of the NCAA tournament. As his Huskies weaved through the West, allegations surfaced his program may have violated NCAA rules in the recruitment of Nate Miles, who never played for the Huskies but has left a lasting imprint.

Calhoun, who will turn 67 next month, said Friday he could not discuss the problems that face his program -- not that he wouldn’t like to.

“Please do not think by my silence about what’s been swirling around a little bit, quite a bit actually, that it’s not because I don’t want to say anything,” he said. “It’s because we can’t say anything else. We’ve been put on a restraining order while the NCAA continues its review.”

There was a smattering of boos when Connecticut players and coaches were introduced onto the court for Friday’s practice, so you can expect the Huskies will want to do plenty of talking on the court. It helps that the team boasts the most menacing player in the field, 7-foot-3 center Hasheem Thabeet, who will be looking to swat away all the shots and criticism.

The second game, North Carolina and Villanova, doesn’t have as many headline-making subplots but is interesting on its own merits.

Villanova, the lowest-seeded team of the four as a No. 3 out of the East, is the closest thing this field has left to an underdog story. Wildcats Coach Jay Wright is the only coach in the Final Four who has not won a national title. Wright said he grew up admiring the other three coaches, especially the man he is coaching against Saturday.

“It’s very humbling, it’s a thrill,” Wright said of being in such select coaching company. “Roy Williams honestly to me was like a god.”

Villanova, trying to rekindle some of the magic of 1985, when the Wildcats won the national title as an eighth-seeded team, have the rare chance in this tournament to topple some giants. The Wildcats have, in consecutive games, defeated UCLA (11 championships) and Duke (three) by a combined 43 points. Next up is North Carolina, winner of four titles.

The magic for Villanova continued last week when guard Scottie Reynolds scored the winning basket, with 0.5 of a second left, to defeat Big East rival Pittsburgh to win the East Regional.

North Carolina, though, wants to write a different ending. The class led by senior Tyler Hansbrough, last year’s national consensus player of the year, has done everything in Chapel Hill except win a national title. Last year’s team lost to Kansas, the team once coached by Roy Williams, by 18 in the national semifinals.

North Carolina promises to be ready this year. The Tar Heels began the season as the first unanimous No. 1 in the history of the Associated Press poll. Their season took a dip when they started 0-2 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, but North Carolina has recovered and repositioned itself for another title bid.

Hansbrough said he returned for his senior year for a lot of reasons -- and this is definitely one of them.

“A lot of people would say it would be a failure to come back and not win a national championship,” Hansbrough said. “I didn’t come back just to win a national championship. We are relieved we got here, but there is some pressure added just to get it done.”

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com