Michigan State's locker room was quiet after Saturday night's stunning overtime loss to Indiana, and then quietly busy. Reporters milled about from player to player, asking questions and searching for answers.
Cassius Winston reflected on another backbreaking effort that was undone by a couple crucial misses. Nick Ward tried to explain a disastrous night at the free throw line. Matt McQuaid, the team's best shooter, spoke about not shooting nearly enough.
But the scrum that lasted the longest surrounded a player who didn't touch the floor Saturday night, who hasn't touched the floor in the last nine games, who won't touch the floor for the rest of the reason. For about 25 minutes, recorders held toward him until every other player had showered, changed and left the locker room, Joshua Langford professed his faith in this team and the larger plan at work.
No, Langford said, he's never dealt with an injury like this. The junior shooting guard went down in late December due to ankle soreness and found out earlier this week he'll need surgery.
"But I have dealt with a life threatening disease," Langford said, smiling softly at the juxtaposition. "So this is nothing. This is not nothing."
When Langford was 12 years old, he was told there was a strong chance he'd never play basketball again. He was told he might go blind or deaf, or both. Those around him were told he might not make it at all. Langford was told all this lying in a hospital bed, unable to stomach any food, unable to sleep due to splitting headaches.
Langford made it. And he soon made it back on the basketball court. In fact, that very year, Langford, a seventh grader in the midst of a growth spurt, helped his team to an undefeated season. The next year he was bumped up early to his high school team and captured the first of five consecutive Class-3A Player of the Year awards in the state of Alabama.
Who said anything about not touching the floor? Langford never left it.
Find Langford anywhere he can help, a co-captain living up to his title.
"That’s the key to life," Langford said, "is you have to understand you have to serve even when you’re not getting served. You have to sacrifice when you feel like you’re getting sacrificed."
Make no mistake, Langford's latest setback has been a trying ordeal. He admits he's grown upset at times. He admits he's cried. His positive outlook probably belies how deeply it hurts him to be constrained to the sideline.
"I'm a human being," he said. "I still have emotions. I wanted to play, I wanted to get out there and practice, but I still had to keep my teammates encouraged because that’s my job and that's my purpose in life."
Langford is one to find the silver lining in any scenario. In this case, his junior season yanked from his hands, he's grown as a leader and learned more about the game he loves. His relationship with Tom Izzo has blossomed. Langford understands the coach's perspective in a way he never did before. He appreciates why his face sometimes turns red and the veins almost burst in his neck.
The mild-mannered Langford isn't one to stomp and shout himself, but he laughs and admits he's caught himself recently sounding like a coach -- equal parts Izzo and his dad.
"All the time, man, all the time," he said. "It’s funny, you just see the game different when you’re on the sidelines. You see so many times why coach is upset, why the coaches are yelling at us they way they’re yelling at us. But it’s fun, man, because it’s just another way for me to evolve as a basketball player."
When it comes to injecting his voice, Langford said he picks his spots. Sometimes he'll encourage Izzo to look at a play a different way, other times he'll tell him after a teammate makes a mistake, "Hey, I got this. Let me talk to him." He's been beside these guys in tight moments. He knows how they respond to certain prompts. What fires one player up might shut the next one down.
(The freshman Henry, for example, is better left alone during timeouts. His feel for the game, said Langford, is such that he understands when he's made a mistake and how to fix it.)
The first time Langford spoke up in this fashion, he wasn't sure Izzo would listen. When he did, "It surprised me," said Langford, "it really did."
He paused for a moment, then smiled and shook his head.
"He’s full of surprises."
Of course, Izzo named Langford a co-captain for a reason. What kind of coach would he be to turn around and ignore Langford's advice?
"Me and him have grown to have a pretty good relationship, so we can kind of jump ideas and different things off each other," Langford said. "It’s really been great for us because it’s allowed me to see it through his lens and his perspective, so I can kind of understand where he’s coming from more. It’s helped (our) relationship have a little bit more cohesiveness."
A couple years ago -- well before his injury, he notes -- Langford got a brass bracelet inscribed with Proverbs 3, 5 and 6. He never takes it off. It occasionally jingles when he speaks, like a soundtrack to his thoughts. The message, he said, is both simple and not simple, but right there in front of him. It's about trusting in the path he believes God has laid out for him.
He trusted in it when he was 12, and he's trusting in it now.
"I just look back at my life, when situations came and it seemed like I was going to fall, I was going to die -- but I’m living right now. Sometimes you can’t get a testimony unless you go through a test, sometimes you can’t get a message unless you go through some mess," Langford said. "That’s how I see things."
"I'm not on the court, but I'm still on the court -- if you really think about it -- because I'm still using my voice, I'm still reminding guys what they need to do," Langford said. "That’s what I was doing when I was playing, and I'm not going to stop."