In his 31st season as Michigan State coach, Tom Izzo often sounds disgusted with the current state of college basketball.
From nebulous name-image-likeness figures being thrown around to anything-goes eligibility to entitled players more worried about what they’re being paid than how they can help the team, he never misses a chance to lament the dysfunction.
“I don’t know what keeps me in it,” Izzo said Thursday in Washington. “I do question it sometimes. I’m not ready to give into the system, even though I think the system is completely broken.”
He is, however, very much satisfied with the state of his program. And when he says he loves this team, there is no reason not to believe him. It has not only brought him to the Sweet 16 for the 17th time in his career, but it has also totally validated his worldview and belief system.
The 71-year-old Izzo continues to push back against the tide. The tumultuous evolution of college sports has helped nudge some of Izzo’s highly accomplished peers such as Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski and Jay Wright into retirement.
With Izzo, the turmoil has had the opposite effect. He has dug in, adapted — at least a little — and resumed winning big on his terms.
Tom Izzo says he likes to tell his players this about advancing through the tournament: You get me through the first two games and I’ll get you through the next two. (Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
“They say as you get older, you go old-school, and I’m still going to continue to say, I want right-school,” Izzo said last week in Buffalo, N.Y., where the third-seeded Spartans swept through the first two rounds to set up a marquee East Regional semifinal against second-seeded UConn on Friday night. “I want to continue to do what’s right. What’s right.”
Every Izzo news conference these days could be punctuated with Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” playing him off.
“I’m adjusting,” Izzo said. “I’m adapting the best I can. But I’m not going to change the principles. I’m not going to be afraid to coach a guy because he can transfer this week. I’m going to do what I think is best, whether anybody believes this or not, for my guys.”
Izzo is now 26 years removed from his national championship season with Mateen Cleaves leading the Flintstones, the coach’s fifth season in charge after replacing the revered Jud Heathcote in East Lansing.
Former Marquette and Indiana coach Tom Crean, whose relationship with Izzo goes back 40 years, said the early championship shaped Izzo’s convictions and drive.
“He never loses sight of the journey, even when he’s going on about something else,” Crean said. “And I think when he looks back, because he’s had so much success with the players over time and those relationships, he absolutely knows what that’s about. And he keeps fighting for it to be that way. He might be fighting a battle that’s never going to be won, but in his mind, he’s going to do everything he can do to win it all.”
Former Michigan State football coach Mark Dantonio calls Izzo a problem solver.
“He’s innovative, he’s creative, and as basketball moves forward, he moves forward,” Dantonio said.
Of course, nothing runs smoothly for three decades. There were definitely problems to solve a few years ago. The program glitched coming out of the pandemic-abbreviated 2019-20 season. The Spartans went 41-38 in the Big Ten over a four-season stretch from 2020-21 to 2023-24 and could not do better than a No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
The longest sustained stretch of mediocrity for Michigan State basketball under Izzo coincided with the loosening of transfer rules by the NCAA (and the subsequent torpedoing of them by a federal judge) and the ban on college athletes being compensated for their name, image and likeness being lifted in 2021.
As other schools were diving into the transfer portal and opening up wallets to transform rosters from year to year, Izzo and Michigan State were sticking with a more traditional approach: Recruit and develop.
Michigan State has been to the Final Four eight times under Izzo. The last five teams to make it there included just one lottery pick: Denzel Valentine, who played four years at Michigan State and was drafted 14th (the last lottery spot) by Chicago in 2016.
It’s not that Izzo would not take transfers or didn’t want players to be paid, but he wasn’t interested in turning over a team annually with short-term solutions.
The 2022-23 Spartans finished fourth in the Big Ten and made a run to the Sweet 16 as a 7 seed behind Tyson Walker and Joey Hauser, a couple of transfers who arrived with multiple years of eligibility and ended up playing three seasons apiece at Michigan State.
Fortunes turned last season in East Lansing. Boosted by freshman Jase Richardson, a legacy Spartan whose father is former Michigan State star Jason Richardson, Izzo’s team ran away with the the Big Ten regular-season title, earned a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament and reached the Elite Eight.
The core of this year’s team is players from last year’s team who have, simply, gotten better.
“Everyone talks about culture, they really do, but the truth is, we do have culture,” said assistant coach Doug Wojcik, who in two stints has spent more than a decade working for Izzo. “I think we’ve been very fiscally responsible with the NIL. We want kids that want to be at Michigan State. So consequently, we don’t have kids just coming in and wanting to leave and moving on.”
Michigan State’s big addition in the transfer portal last offseason, Kaleb Glenn, has missed the entire season after a summer knee injury. Without him, the Spartans’ top seven scorers, and the entire starting lineup since freshman Jordan Scott joined it Feb. 4, are homegrown.
Junior point guard Jeremy Fears Jr. leads the nation in assists per game (9.4); senior Jaxon Kohler has developed into a versatile stretch power forward; Coen Carr is a springy third-year wing who has become more than just a spectacular dunker; 6-11 senior Carson Cooper has gone from foul-prone space eater off the bench to reliable presence in the paint.
They have embraced the Izzo way.
“Not every day that you get a great person, a great leader that comes up, shows up to work and teaches you how to keep getting better, whether it’s on the court or off the court,” Fears said after breaking Magic Johnson’s school record for assists in an NCAA Tournament game with 16 against Louisville.
Izzo likes to tell his players when it comes to advancing in the tournament, You get me through the first two games and I’ll get you through the next two.
“I think we’re blessed to have someone who’s been through the wringer for 28 years straight in this tournament,” Cooper said. “It’s comfortable for us to kind of look up to him and trust what he’s telling us because we know he’s been there.”
Wojcik says the fiery Izzo has mellowed a bit. As with most people as they get older, Izzo seems more introspective and prone to get emotional.
“This is tear-jerking for me because I’m watching guys grow in front of me like it’s supposed to happen,” he said after the Louisville game.
“It’s a struggle for me to be invigorated,” Izzo said. “I love my job, I said I question my profession. I do question it, and everybody should know I question it, because at the end of the day I’m still out for what’s best for the student-athlete, and I don’t think we’re doing that. But I’m too stubborn to quit, too.”
And with that, another Izzo postgame news conference turns existential.
“So my energy is because deep down, I respect the (coaches) that left. I understand why some of them did,” he said. “I appreciate what my boss told me a long time ago: Your job is to be a steward of the game. I don’t think right now enough coaches are standing up to be stewards of the game, and a steward of the game means to try to do what’s best for a player. We’ll see as time goes.”
Cue Ol’ Blue Eyes.
