With Michigan State dancing its way into the NCAA Final Four this past weekend with a narrow win over the Big Orange Vols in the Elite Eight, I thought I would look back on the best prep hoopsters from the county in the last 20 years that headed off to East Lansing and did some damage with the Spartans on the college level. 

My Starting Line-Up

Kalin Lucas (OL St. Mary's) – Outstanding lead guard with the Eaglets in the mid-2000s. Lucas was named Class A all-state as both a junior (26 ppg) and senior (23 ppg), before going to the EL and tearing it up in the Big Ten. Last season as a sophomore, he was named Big Ten conference MVP and led the Sparties into the NCAA championship game. This year it was more of the same before getting hurt in the Tourney against Maryland.

Mat Ishbia (Birmingham Seaholm) – The definition of the words gritty and determined both in high school with the Maples and in college when he walked-on at MSU and made it to three final fours as a player and one as an assistant coach. Ishbia was the county's second leading scorer as a senior at Seaholm in 1998, averaging 24.5 ppg. As a junior, he helped lead the Maples to both conference and district championships.

Mike Chappell (Southfield-Lathrup) – One of the best players to come out of the OC in the 1990s. Chappell was a high-flying and high-scoring wingman with the Chargers before becoming primarily a 3-point specialist in the college ranks. After leading Lathrup on a miracle run through the 1996 state tournament which ended in a loss to Saginaw in the state championship game, he started his college career at Duke (leading the team in 3-point shooting his freshman year), prior to joining the Spartans in 1999 and being a major cog in a national championship in 2000 and a run back into the Final Four as a senior in 2001.

Dwayne Stephens (Ferndale) – A legend in the pantheon of Ferndale hoop greats and the best player at the school throughout the entire decade of the 1980s. Led the Eagles on numerous deep runs into the state tournament and was a two-time all-state selection ('88, '89). As a Spartan, he flourished early, earning playing time right away and scoring the game-winning bucket in the team's Big Ten championship-clinching win over Purdue on the last game of the regular season in 1990. As a junior in 1992, he was named the team's MVP, averging 10 points and 6 boards per game. Following his playing days, Stephens has become a coach, first as an assistant at Oakland University, then Marquette (where he went to a Final Four on Tom Crean's bench in 2003), and finally the past seven years under Tom Izzo in Spartyland.

Paul Davis (Rochester) – Very dominant high school player with some very average Falcons teams in the early-portion of the last decade. Davis won the ever-coveted Mr. Basketball Award his senior year in 2002. Went to East Lansing and started for most of his career for the Spartans. He helped lead MSU to the Final Four in 2005, in a tournament where he took home top rebounding honors for the entire affair. Drafted in the early-second round by the L.A. Clippers in 2006 and has also played on the Washington Wizards, before being cut in late-2009.