African Dream via America’s Game: Mady Sissoko and his journey to the NCAA Tournament

It was early March – Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo’s favorite month of the year – and Mady Sissoko had just wrapped up an hours-long practice inside the Spartans’ practice facility in the lower levels of the Breslin Center. Sissoko blitzed ball screens, blocked shots, caught lobs. Beads of sweat on his forehead fell to the floor. Afterward, he practiced free-throws and stretched out with his teammates. 

It’s hard work playing basketball for a Hall of Famer. 

But it’s also something that Sissoko is used to now. It’s part of his job as a student-athlete, working and training at the elite level of college basketball. Since playing his first season of organized basketball roughly seven years ago, the six-foot-nine, 240-pound Sissoko – who journeyed to Michigan State from West Africa via Mount Pleasant, Utah – is now the Spartans’ starting center. His minutes per game have quadrupled this season compared to the previous two. 

It’s where he’s wanted to be since he first picked up a basketball at age 15 in Bafoulabe, Mali, the eighth-largest country in Africa by land area. 

“It just changed my life,” Sissoko said. “It was just a blessing to pick up basketball. My brother was the one helping me. He said, ‘We have to do something. You’re going to play soccer, or we’re going to let you try out basketball.’ So he helped me do that. I never dreamed about coming to America, but it happened.”

Now accustomed to his new home, Sissoko is looking to give back.

“I decided I’m going to build a school in my home town, close to my village so people can go to school,” Sissoko said. 

When Sissoko was a young teen-ager in Bafoulabe, he walked an hour each way to attend school. Sometimes in bare feet.

“We’re a little bit far away from school,” Sissoko said. “The bicycle ride is like 45 minutes.”

He wants to shorten the distance between the current reality and educational dreams for young people who live in his village today, and for years to come.

“Just helping people back home, that was my main goal when I came here,” Sissoko said.

The Malian big man recently founded the Mady Sissoko Foundation to raise money to help build the school. The goal of the foundation is to raise $50,000. On top of that, Sissoko has donated all of his NIL earnings to the cause. 

Only in today’s era of NIL would something like Sissoko’s foundation be possible for a college basketball player. It’s a rare opportunity for Sissoko, who deeply values his home country and the people who helped raise him.

“To have an NIL opportunity to do that is definitely something successful for my community,” Sissoko said. “When (the people in my village) heard we were going to build a school there, everybody was just excited. I’m just excited to do this. I think back home, it’s going to help a lot of kids to encourage them to go to school. If they have the materials and stuff there, I think they have the ability to go to school and learn and just get a better education for themselves.”

Progress on the school is already being made, and Sissoko has been able to view the work being done through photos sent to him by his brother. But that’s not where Sissoko’s goals end. His next project is providing clean water to the people in his village. 

“We’ll basically try to do both at the same time,” Sissoko said. “It’s going to be hard, but we will try.”

Sissoko has received contributions from members of the East Lansing and Michigan State communities. 

“There’s great people in Michigan,” Sissoko said. “They know about it and they’ve just been reaching out to me just to say, ‘Hey, we want to help.’ It’s been good. There’s a great group of people here who are willing to help me every single day.”

Sissoko’s charitable acts come as no shock to those who know him.

“I’d be surprised if he wasn’t doing stuff for other people,” said David Evans, Sissoko’s high school basketball coach at Wasatch Academy in Mount Pleasant, Utah. “That was the reason he chose Michigan State. He felt like Michigan State was a group of people that gave back. He’s that kind of person. He wants to give back to Mali. He’s just a really genuine person.

“(Sissoko) has just done so many amazing things for so many people, and he wants nothing in return.”

Sissoko’s foundation also serves as a way for him to stay connected with his friends and family back home. He hasn’t been back to Mali since 2021 when he renewed his visa. He was only able to visit his family a handful of times while he was in high school in Utah. 

“Every time I go, I just stay there for five to seven days and then come back,” Sissoko said. “I haven’t seen a lot of people since I’ve been here. I haven’t seen all my friends and some of the people I grew up with. I haven’t seen them since I’ve been here. I still have a connection with them, but I haven’t seen them. That’s been a little hard, but you know, I’m here for a reason and I think I just have to take care of that.”

Phone calls have been hit or miss over the past few years, too. 

“Some of them have very easy (phone) connections,” Sissoko said. “They have a phone and I can talk to them. But people who live in my main village, since I’ve gotten here, I haven’t even spoken to some of them because they don’t have a good connection. Their internet or phone, I can’t talk to them.”

But that will likely change soon. With help, Sissoko and his family in Mali have been provided satellite phones that allow them to communicate with people around the world. For the first time in years, Sissoko will get the chance to reconnect with his loved ones. 

“I’m very excited to talk to them when they get a phone,” Sissoko said. “They should get a phone in the next couple of weeks, so I’m very excited about that.”

The next time Sissoko is back in Bafoulabe, he’ll get to see the progress on the school he helped build. He’ll also probably enjoy some of his mom’s cooking, especially her famous rice with peanut sauce. It’s one of the things he misses most about being home. 

“She’s an amazing cook” Sissoko said. “I miss that and just being around with the family. And then also when you’re over there, you speak French every single day and you don’t lose it. But here I only speak French a couple of times. Not many people here speak French, so I have to take a couple of classes to speak French so I can grow my French a little bit. But definitely my mom cooking food, I miss that a lot.”

ADJUSTING TO A NEW LIFE

Sissoko’s perseverance is what allowed him to reach this point in his life, granting him a chance to fulfill his goal of providing for his native community. He didn’t even think moving to America was a possibility in 2016, but his brother was there to convince him that his dreams could become reality.

Sissoko’s brother, Souleymane, was in the Malian Armed Forces in 2016, around the time Sissoko first met Mike Clayton. Clayton, the administrator of the Utah Valley Eye Center in Provo, Utah, was in Mali at the time on a charitable campaign to help perform free cataract surgeries for those living in the area.

When Clayton arrived in Mali, he was greeted by a group of armed military personnel assigned to protect him due to civil unrest in the country. Souleymane happened to be one of the guards in that group.

On a trip to a nearby village, Souleymane, the second-oldest of Sissoko’s nine siblings, told Clayton about his young, tall, athletic teen-aged brother, Mady. Souleymane asked Clayton if he would be interested in helping Sissoko travel to the United States to further his education and perhaps grow as a basketball player. 

Clayton said yes, and Souleymane made an eight-hour trip via motorcycle back to his family’s village to pick up Sissoko and drive him back to meet Clayton. 

When Sissoko and his brother made it back, Sissoko demonstrated what he knew about the game of basketball to Clayton on a nearby hoop. Clayton was impressed by Sissoko, who was already taller than Souleymane at the time.

Clayton committed to helping Sissoko, the youngest member of his family, obtain a visa and travel back to America.  

As hard as it was to leave his family, the prospects were too good to pass up for Sissoko. He originally figured he would follow in his brother’s footsteps and join the military. Or maybe he would pursue a soccer career. After all, it’s the game he grew up playing and still enjoys today as an FC Barcelona fan.

Another option would have been to continue helping his family hand-plow the corn crops near their home. Growing up, Sissoko spent more time plowing the crops than he did on his education, out of family necessity. Mady and Souleymane wanted that to change. Basketball became the vehicle. 

UNDERSTANDING THE GAME

Learning the game of basketball for the first time is one thing, but learning it in America while not knowing English is another. That was Sissoko’s reality when he first touched down in Mount Pleasant, Utah, where he’d spend the next four years of his life playing organized basketball for the first time at Wasatch Academy. 

The boarding school is home to one of the oldest prep basketball programs in the nation, as well as its English Language Learning Program. That’s something Sissoko particularly valued during his time at Wasatch. As challenging as the initial transition was, Sissoko was determined to learn English and add it to the three languages that he already knew. 

“English was a little bit difficult,” Sissoko said. “Before you can connect to people, you have to be able to speak with them, but I wasn’t able to do that when I first got here so it was a little bit difficult. But as soon as I started understanding English, I started talking to more people.”

The resources that Sissoko lacked in his home village made it difficult to pursue a formal education. But opportunities afforded by basketball, with help from Clayton, and Souleymane’s vision, and Sissoko’s determination, yielded a powerful mix.

“When I first got here, I went to Utah and it was a very difficult time,” Sissoko said. “But as I moved on, things just got easier. I got used to the culture. The culture is a little bit different here than back home. But I’m used to the culture now. Especially around (the time I was in) Utah, it was so different. For me, it’s just gotten better and better every single day.”

Evans, who coached Sissoko for two years at Wasatch, was impressed by Sissoko’s willingness to learn and get better day-in and day-out. That, plus Sissoko’s natural fire and tenacity on the basketball court, made his transition to the American game a smooth one. 

“He was an incredible young man already,” Evans said of Sissoko. “Very thoughtful and very kind. He played relentlessly and very, very hard.

“(He) played so hard that his learning curve went away a lot faster. He does exactly what you want him to do.”

Sissoko’s length, strength and leaping ability made him an immediate presence on the basketball court. But his skills were unpolished. He caught and finished lob passes well, but had to work on developing a 10-foot jump shot. The coaching staff at Wasatch saw potential and continued to unlock it as Sissoko grew older. 

In just four quick years, Sissoko became a top-100 high school basketball prospect in the country. Michigan State was one of 20 schools to offer Sissoko a basketball scholarship, according to On3. It was former Michigan State assistant Mike Garland who first made contact with the big man, albeit unintentionally.

Garland’s purpose on his visit to Wasatch roughly three years ago was to watch one of Sissoko’s teammates during practice. But Sissoko’s physical ability couldn’t be denied. After a talk with Sissoko, Evans and the rest of the Wasatch staff, Garland quickly brought Sissoko to the attention of his colleagues at Michigan State. They grew to like Sissoko just as much as he did.

Sissoko committed to Michigan State over BYU on Sep. 10, 2019. Since then, he’s learned from the Spartan coaching staff and the big men who were above him on the depth chart when he arrived, like Marcus Bingham, Jr. and Julius Marble.

The learning process was obstructed by the COVID-19 pandemic. He and the team didn’t get to train as they normally would in the summer of 2020, and by the time the 2020-21 season started, they were playing in front of cardboard cutouts rather than fans. 

The pandemic allowed Sissoko time to sit at home and rest a hand injury he sustained during his senior year of high school. But the negatives were numerous. 

“COVID-19 set me back for sure,” Sissoko said. “Not doing anything and just kind of staying inside the house, it impacted a lot. When I got into college, we were not able to do any summer workouts.”

He couldn’t measure his game against the returning Spartan players, nor could he brush up on his English with teammates and just build human bonds.

Once Bingham, Jr. graduated and Marble transferred to Texas A&M after the 2021-22 season, Izzo didn’t pursue a center in the transfer portal. He felt Sissoko was ready to step into the starting lineup and contribute. He believed in Sissoko as a talent on the rise, much to the confusion of many Michigan State fans due to the unproven nature of Sissoko’s game.

Sissoko only averaged five minutes per game through his first two seasons in East Lansing. 

Izzo’s decision appeared to pay off at the beginning of the new season, most notably when Michigan State beat Kentucky, 86-77, on Nov. 15 in the Champions Classic. Sissoko scored 16 points and grabbed eight rebounds against the reigning National Player of the Year, Oscar Tshiebwe.

It was a breakout night for Michigan State’s still-unproven starter. His 16 points remains his career high.

“It’s definitely been different from past years because I’m not wondering if I’m going to play or not,” Sissoko said. “This year is definitely different, just to know you’re starting, you’re playing. You have to know your role.”

After the Kentucky game, Sissoko was interviewed by ESPN’s Holly Rowe as his teammates stood behind him. They literally had Sissoko’s back as he conducted his first national interview as a college player with a smile on his face. When the interview was over, his teammates yelled with joy and excitement, proud of Sissoko for a career performance that served as tangible proof of how far he’s come. 

“It was an amazing feeling,” Sissoko said. “I would take that day every single day. It was a great feeling just to know that, ‘Oh my goodness, my teammates have my back, my coaches have my back. You did something. Everybody’s there for you.’ It was a great feeling.”

Evans, watching on TV back home in Utah, loved seeing Sissoko’s progress through perseverance.

“I’m sure the first two years (at Michigan State) were hard,” Evans said. “When he had that amount of success in one game, it’s amazing. He’s not taking it for granted. He’s still such a team guy. He’s such a pleasure to coach and be around.”

Sissoko’s productivity has wavered throughout the 2022-23 season. But his lateral movement and intelligence have made him valuable in ball screen defense – a crucial area for team success in the Izzo program.

Sissoko’s role will be critical on Sunday when Michigan State plays No. 2 seed Marquette in the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament.

“This weekend has been all about ball screen defense,” Michigan State assistant coach Doug Wojcik said after Saturday’s practice. “This game is 40 minutes of ball screen defense. Right now I think Mady Sissoko has kind of stepped up as a decent vocal leader and experienced defender for us.”

On offense, Sissoko has the beginnings of terrific back-to-the-basket ability in the low post. Those skills flash at times in practice, but they have yet to be fully refined and demonstrated on game day. But they are coming. 

Meanwhile, in the last two weeks, he has become more forceful in his defense around the rim and his rebounding aggressiveness.

People are watching, from Utah to West Africa.

Evans will send Sissoko texts on occasion, especially after a big-time performance like the one against Kentucky. 

“I just want him to know that I love him and that I care about him,” Evans said.

Sissoko has enjoyed his expanded role on Michigan State’s team. The experiences have kept coming as he continues to learn and grow as a player. Izzo has said throughout this season that there is still more to Sissoko’s game. That’s likely true for any player who’s only played seven years worth of organized basketball, especially an elite athletic package like Sissoko.

“I think my coaching staff has done a great job staying patient with me because I’m learning basketball every single day,” Sissoko said. “It’s a great program and everybody dreams to come here. It’s a little bit different for me because kids in America know, ‘OK, this is the school that I want to go to when I grow up.’ I didn’t have that. I didn’t have a dream school. I just came here to play basketball. But as soon as I knew about Michigan State, I took two visits here and the people were great around me. It was an amazing feeling. My heart took me here and I just followed.”

Now, Sissoko and Michigan State will look to make a run in the 2023 NCAA Tournament. One last ride for the Spartans after a season full of ups and downs. For the brother, son, student and teammate that is Mady Sissoko, it’s a chance to keep growing, to keep proving himself the same way he always has since coming over to America seven years ago. 

“This (his Michigan State team) is a great group of people to be around,” Sissoko said. “It’s not very big or small. But it’s a great group of people to be around. 

“It’s basically lucky for me because everywhere I go, I’ve been around a great group of people who have been willing to help me.”

And every bead of sweat has been worth it.

(For more information on donating to the Mady Sissoko Foundation, follow the link).