When Cornell Mann takes his seat — the head coach’s seat — on the visitor's bench at Breslin Center on Tuesday night, before his Grand Valley State team plays Michigan State in an exhibition game, he might take a minute to let it soak in.
Mann, beginning his first season as Grand Valley’s head coach, has been coming to Breslin since the building opened. Since he was a Michigan State recruit. Since since he, Anthony “Pig” Miller, Shawn Respert and Eric Snow spent the summer of 1990 working at the Meijer Warehouse in Lansing. Since his cousin and close friend Dwayne Stephens began playing for the Spartans, long before he was on Tom Izzo's staff.