Mady Sissoko will have a special visitor for Michigan State basketball's senior day

EAST LANSING — Mady Sissoko arrived in America with a dream to play college basketball. He got to do that at Michigan State, starting in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

That was half a world away from his family that remained at home in Mali.

Nearly four years later, the senior forward’s next game at Breslin Center might be his last. And as he looks into the stands, the brother who helped him begin his journey will be there to watch him with pride.

“It means everything to me,” Sissoko said of the planned visit from his older brother Soulemayne after practice Monday. “He's going to be the first person in my family to watch me play live, and it's senior night. So that's going to mean the world to me.”

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Sissoko is one of six Spartans for whom Wednesday will likely be their final home game — and a critical one, at that — as MSU hosts Northwestern. Tipoff is 7 p.m. (Big Ten Network), followed by a postgame celebration honoring three fifth-year seniors — Tyson Walker, Malik Hall and Steven Izzo — and three fourth-year seniors: Sissoko, A.J. Hoggard and Davis Smith.

The Spartans (17-12, 9-9 Big Ten) are fighting to shore up their NCAA tournament résumé and to solidify their Big Ten tournament seeding ahead of the league tourney opening March 13 in Minneapolis. Only two regular-season games remain as MSU is tied for seventh in the conference; MSU already lost once (by 14 points in Evanston, Illinois, in early January) to the Wildcats (20-9, 11-7), who enter Wednesday in third place.

“It'll be an emotional night,” MSU coach Tom Izzo said Monday. “And I'd say this publicly, that our crowds have been unbelievable throughout the year. Even though we've been a little more up and down, they have not. And I would ask them to be as supportive this Wednesday, because it'll be a big game for us not only because it's senior night but a game we need to win.”

And should Sissoko start again after going to the bench for one game last week, the pregame intros could be among the most emotional Izzo has experienced.

For the 6-foot-9, 250-pound Sissoko, it is a chance to show his brother what the crowd and people at MSU mean to him. Mady has started 25 of 29 games this season, averaging 3.6 points and 5.4 rebounds, and he can't wait to introduce Soulemayne to his basketball family and “show him how beautiful campus is” compared to their West African desert village.

“It's been a blessing here, a lot of ups and downs and stuff. But it's been an honor to be here,” Sissoko said. “You have great people around you who are pushing you in the good and the bad. It's just amazing how this place is. This is my second home now, and they've helped me in a lot of ways. This is a place I will never forget about, for sure.”

Soulemayne, who arrived Monday, played a major role in Mady’s basketball career in Mali, a landlocked country in the northwest corner of Africa. Soulemayne visited a free eye care clinic in the capital city of Bamako in 2015 and met the sponsor, Mike Clayton, an optometrist from Provo, Utah. There, he told Clayton about his “little brother that's really tall and wants to play basketball in the United States,” Clayton told the Free Press in 2020.

Their village, Tangafoya, was a 200-mile drive away on dirt roads that are unsafe to travel due to nearby terrorist activity. As Clayton recalled, Soulemayne drove there and back on a motorbike to get Mady to Bamako the next day so Clayton could watch him work out on an outdoor basketball court. What he saw was a youngster who “had no basketball skill, but he could jump out of the ceiling.”

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Clayton showed video of Sissoko to a friend who coached at Wasatch Academy back in Utah, and a connection was made. He became Sissoko’s guardian, helped him get a visa and brought him to Utah in 2016. At Wasatch, Sissoko became a four-star prospect on raw talent alone. Sissoko picked MSU, but the pandemic furthered his isolation after he arrived on campus in May 2020.

“He left his family for an opportunity to come and get an education and play basketball,” Clayton said in June. “And he truly feels like he'd let his family down if he doesn't come back and become something because of it.”

Sissoko has been back to Mali a few times, including last May on a charitable trip to see the new school with a bathroom, clean running water and a medical clinic his Mady Sissoko Foundation helped build. He was able to see his family, including Soulemayne, along with his parents, six sisters and two other brothers.

Continuing to provide for his village is something Sissoko — who speaks three languages — has said will be his lifelong goal.

“Hopefully, the things I've been doing over there to help, those things will grow,” Sissoko said. “Expand the school and also any opportunity I can get to help them over there. So that's gonna be my mission, for sure.”

In August, Sissoko’s father, Kassim, died. Then in January, during the season, Sissoko learned his grandmother also had died.

That makes his brother’s visit to Michigan even more impactful.

“Obviously, none of us have ever met (Soulemayne). ... I'm just happy for (Mady),” Steven Izzo said after practice Monday. “It's such a cool experience, and to share that with family is awesome. Just imagine that. I'm two minutes away from home, and I still miss my family. I couldn't imagine it. And he's pushed through it for four years. Kudos to him. I don't know if I could do that.”

Sissoko, Hoggard and Smith all have an option for another year thanks to the NCAA waiver for the 2020-21 season, but coach Tom Izzo said he and the players will figure that out once this season ends. (Walker, Hall and Steven Izzo are out of eligibility.) The Spartans close out the regular season at Indiana on Sunday (4:30 p.m., CBS).

“The way I look at it, my seniors are seniors this year from everything I know,” the Hall of Fame coach said. “But if one or two have opportunities, that'll be addressed after the year.”

First, their agenda is trying to stop a Northwestern squad that handed MSU its second-worst defeat of the season on Jan. 7. (Wisconsin’s 13- and 15-point victories are MSU's only other double-digit losses this season.) The Wildcats have won the past three meetings and four of five in the series against the Spartans, including the past two at Breslin.

There won’t be any banners raised Wednesday night, and the only one MSU can still shoot for is by getting to a Final Four — something none of the seniors have done and Izzo hasn’t achieved since 2019. The Spartans also have not won a Big Ten tournament title in five years (though Breslin does not have banners for those).

That won’t diminish the importance of senior night to Sissoko, whose accomplishments beyond basketball already are adding up. After the game, he'll be able to share those accomplishments with his brother and thank him for starting him on his path.

“This is a lifetime memory,” Sissoko said. “Coach has talked about that, and he said the season is not over until we actually are done. I think we believe that we're gonna take a step forward, especially with this special month coming up. So we're gonna do something special.”

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State basketball: Special guest for Mady Sissoko senior night