EAST LANSING, Michigan — The last time Michigan State played a basketball game at Jenison Field House, it was as part of the 1989 National Invitation Tournament.
More than 20 years later, the Spartan men's basketball team will make a return to the venerable, historic, 72-year old Jenison Field House, now with the Spartans as a hot-ticket, elite national power, and capable of creating national news when Michigan State plays host to Tuskegee University at Jenison on Dec. 15 in commemoration of an important event in American sports history.
The game will honor the 50th anniversary of the 1963 NCAA Tournament game played at Jenison Field House between Mississippi State and Loyola of Chicago.
Mississippi State's team, in the face of racism, against the orders of the governor of the state of Mississippi and Mississippi's state police, snuck out of Starkville, Miss., with an all-white squad in order to play Loyola, which started four African-Americans.
That game, now remembered as the "Game of Change," is regarded as a landmark in race relations.
Loyola wins 1963 NCAA basketball title...it is historically significant in that, 3 years before Texas Western, Loyola started 4 black players and Cincinnati 3 (the 1st championship in which the majority of the starters were black). Loyola's starting 5 played the entire game.
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