The concept of family is not just a basketball trope at Michigan State. And he told his teammates to think about their family members, to not just think but go back to their rooms and give them a call. Marcus Bingham had only played with Cassius for one year, sharing the court for a handful of minutes, but he had a little brother he played basketball with, too. Cassius told Khy that they had to accept that their brother was in a better place now.īack in the hotel room, silence filled the air until the quietest player on the team stood up. He just knew his captain could use some space, to be with the brother he had left, and so he took Cassius and Khy on a walk away from everyone else. Often a screamer and a motivator, Izzo didn’t have many words for this. Now, Cassius wished he could sit by his side one final time. Matt McQuaid used to find him in his stall in the locker room after games because that was the closest he could get to Cassius. The news shook them all, given how close Zach was to being a part of the team. He was in the team hotel the night before a game when Tom Izzo found him, holed up in an assistant coach’s room and surrounded by all his teammates. He died Saturday night after he was hit by an Amtrak train near the Albion campus. And even then the thing that comes after is moving on.” His caption reads, “I know the truth is you won’t love me til I’m gone. In them, he’s smiling and flashing the peace sign again. The middle Winston posted one final set of photos to his Instagram account on Friday night. It’s perhaps the closest Cassius can come to reaching his younger brother again. Just a week and a half later, the photos are a way to remember Zach. The oldest Winston boy wanted them all to be a part of this memory, so the parents squeezed around the three sons and flashed their signature toothy grins for one final photo together. “You’ve gotta get in the photo,” Cassius Winston said to her. “Children, children!” Wendi Winston said, readying her phone to snap a photo. The three boys crammed together, flashing peace signs as they cracked jokes on one another. He was in a white hoodie, and they handed him one of those custom black shirts, where the front had a basketball design split in thirds – one each for Cassius, Khy and Zach. And though Zach was merely a spectator due to a pulled hamstring, he cracked a smile from the stands when the buzzer sounded at the end, for now the party could begin.įamily and friends were huddled in a pack outside the locker room when Cassius opened the door. This was the one and only time that Cassius would get to play a college basketball game against his brothers, Zach and Khy. There’s one reason, and one reason only, that a reigning Final Four team like Michigan State would host an exhibition with Albion College, and it was spelled out by the backs of the black T-Shirts in the crowd: The oldest Winston brother’s team just beat his younger brothers' team in a game of basketball, but this one felt bigger than all the others. A 15,000-seat arena was their playground this time. EAST LANSING – Ten days before he'd leave this world, Zach Winston spun around in the Breslin Center stands to see where Cassius ran off to again.
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