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One thing you can count on with the Detroit Lions is that they are never, ever boring. Follow the latest news including injuries, roster moves and more here daily from Oakland Press beat writer Paula Pasche. Plus you'll find regular commentary about the team.

7/21/2008

Roe feeling fine; MSU's Canada trip off

Summer's over, at least for me, and I'll be back to blogging about the Lions all week, but first I had a quick update on incoming Michigan State forward Delvon Roe.

Had the chance to talk to Roe last week and the freshman from Lakewood, Ohio, said he's doing great in his rehab from microfracture knee surgery and has been cleared for all basketball activity. He's not doing everything yet. For precautionary reasons, he won't participate in contact drills and live scrimmages until school resumes. But he insists "I can do the same things I did in October, November, before I got hurt. I still got the same amount of explosiveness, which I'm surprised about. But everything's looking great."

Roe, it should be noted, had a less invasive form of the knee surgery that effectively ended the NBA careers of Chris Webber, Penny Hardaway and Jamal Mashburn. He said he had only about 10 percent of his meniscus removed — others have 40 percent of more. In some ways, he said the injury was a blessing that forced him to work on his jump shot and ball handling, the two rawest areas of his game.

Roe said he expects to average a double-double this year but will be "a pretty small piece of the puzzle compared to" Raymar Morgan, Kalin Lucas, Goran Suton and the rest of MSU's returnees. I know Purdue is most pundits' pick to win the Big Ten, but the Spartans, assuming Roe is healthy and ready to go at the start of the season, are my choice to win their first conference crown since 2001.

As a side note, the Canada trip MSU coach Tom Izzo talked about at the end of last season, basically a foreign tour that affords teams an opportunity for early practice time, is now a no-go (despite a spring report in the Victoria Times Columnist that MSU would play the University of Victoria on Aug. 30). The only feasible time to make a trip was Labor Day weekend, but NCAA rules would prohibit Roe and fellow freshmen Korie Lucious and Draymond Green from playing. With three of this year's expected contributors unavailable, the trip became much less useful.

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