You Can’t Miss the Redeeming Quality Here

For a single-elimination event, the NCAA tournament sure offers a multitude of chances.

Sunday’s Austin Regional final kept producing numerous opportunities for Michigan State or Kentucky to grab the last Final Four berth. And finally, after a long afternoon of mistakes and redemption, enough time for goats to become heroes and then afterthoughts, and the plot to change course several times, Michigan State managed to leave the Frank Erwin Center with a 94-88 victory in double overtime.

The Spartans had more rebounds and assists than the Wildcats, but the stat of the day was second-chance points, the ones officially credited for scores after an offensive rebound. Michigan State won that category, 22-15, but that doesn’t even tell the story of all of the second chances.

What about a player missing a critical free throw and a three-pointer, only to make the shot of the day at the end of regulation? Aren’t those second-chance points?

How about Michigan State’s hanging tight in overtime after pulling in five offensive rebounds on one trip down the court? Shouldn’t there be a special category for sixth-chance points?

Then there’s the Spartan who had to wait 15 days for his next chance. He made up for blowing two free throws at the end of a one-point loss March 11 by making all six of his free throws Sunday.

We love second chances, don’t we? The remix, the director’s cut, the special edition, all that. It’s never too late to make it better.

Take Kentucky guard Patrick Sparks. Even in a losing effort, he was my favorite story of the game. After Ramel Bradley was knocked out of the game on an incidental foul by Michigan State’s Alan Anderson that sent Bradley to the ground headfirst, Sparks had to pinch-hit. The Wildcats trailed by a point with 27.1 seconds remaining in the game when he stepped to the free-throw line for a one-and-one after a long stay on the bench.

He missed. Then he found himself right back on the bench, his head hanging down while Michigan State guard Shannon Brown made two free throws to put the Spartans ahead by three. Then Sparks looked back up.

“If Coach put me in, I was going to try to be ready, so I tried to stay in the game,” Sparks said. “I was disappointed that I didn’t hit the free throws, but you’ve got to stay in the game and come back and keep trying to help your team out.”

Hear that, kids?

Kentucky Coach Tubby Smith sent Sparks back in for what turned out to be a wild sequence. Sparks took a three-pointer from straight away that missed with six seconds left. Kentucky’s Kelenna Azubuike grabbed the rebound, dribbled out to the right corner and launched another three-pointer. That hit the front of the rim.

It came right back to Sparks in three-point country, like Vlade Divac knocking that ball out to Robert Horry three years ago.

“I went from ‘Man, that was our last shot’ to ‘There’s the ball, go get it and shoot it,’ ” Sparks said. “It was a wild moment.”

He gathered it, leaped and launched a shot just before the buzzer sounded.

Talk about multiple chances: The ball hit the front of the rim, skipped to the back, ricocheted off the backboard then bounced a couple of times on the left side of the rim before dropping through.

“It seemed like that shot hung on the rim forever,” Michigan State Coach Tom Izzo said. “I was counting the seconds it was up there wiggling around.”

After it went in, Sparks ran over to the press table, yelling “We’re back!” (among other things) and gave five to CBS’ Billy Packer.

“It was crazy,” Sparks said. “It was such a swing of emotion from being down and out and hitting a shot like that.”

It’s what March is all about. And if the wait for it to go in seemed long, that was nothing compared to the seven-minute delay while the officials went through replay to determine if he got the shot off in time and his right foot was indeed behind the three-point line. They did everything but check for hanging chads. Finally, James Burr signaled that it counted for three.

Kentucky rode the momentum to a four-point lead early in the first overtime. Then came the game-changing sequence. Michigan State missed a three-pointer, a jumper, another three-pointer, a free throw and another three-pointer and got the rebound every time, ultimately leading to a three-pointer by Shannon Brown.

“We were trying to be relentless,” said Brown, who grabbed two of the rebounds himself.

What a great word. Relentless. Isn’t that a necessary quality this time of year?

So is resiliency. The last time Anderson stepped to the line for crucial free throws, he missed two with 6.5 seconds remaining and the Spartans lost to Iowa, 71-69, in the Big Ten tournament. Sunday he made every free throw he shot, including four in the second overtime to keep the Wildcats at bay.

How did he get over the Iowa loss? It helped that Izzo busted the game tape with a sledgehammer in a team meeting.

“Coach smashed those tapes, it jumped right out of me,” Anderson said. “It was done by then.”

Kentucky’s Smith might want to use some plastic explosives on this game tape for the sake of Rajon Rondo’s psyche. Rondo dribbled too much time off the clock on the Wildcats’ last possession at the end of the first overtime and they couldn’t get a shot off. Then he threw a pass away to kill a potential fastbreak in the second overtime.

The thing about Rondo is, he’s a freshman.

He’ll get a second chance.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/Adande.