Michigan State basketball has 17 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances, that’s the 2nd most in the nation. Tom Izzo is indeed “Mr. March” as he sports a winning percentage of 71% in the NCAA Tournament.
Tom Izzo thinks this Michigan State basketball team is the next in line to reach the Final Four, and if this group does do Dallas, then Keith Appling and Adreian Payne will continue the Michigan State basketball tradition: every player who has stayed all fours in East Lansing under Tom Izzo has made at least one Final Four.
Today is a day to “Go Green!” And I don’t mean to just act environmentally friendly. Green for dollars, as in buy in to the team who’s stock is indeed rising. At the perfect time: March.
It’s also St. Patrick’s Day today, so you can where green for that, but I’d rather you wear green because Michigan State basketball is trending. Check out the first of two back and forths that I had with Izzo. The first was after they crushed Northwestern into many little pieces in the Big Ten quarterfinals.
Q. In the four games you’ve had everyone back healthy, have you seen kind of a steady progress, or has it been kind of like a stock market, an up?and?down chart kind of thing?
COACH IZZO: Yeah, we’ve been more of a stock market up?and?down to be honest with you. I think the biggest key tonight was Keith. Your quarterback has got to play well, and I thought he pushed it better. You could still see, though, where he comes in and used to make those moves and just go around a guy and get it up, and he just is?? just hasn’t done it in so long that he’s not as comfortable. But he did push it. We begged him to push it all the time. He did guard very well. That’s the old Keith.
So I think that is the biggest key. Branden, yes. A.P., we really didn’t get much out of A.P., but he’ll be there tomorrow. I’m not worried about A.P.
I think if I had to look at it over the four games, where have I seen a little bit more improvement? The Iowa game, it was Keith that went down a little bit and made some turnovers and that in the Ohio State game, and tonight again he did some good things. We’re making some progress.
Then here’s our back and forth after they won the Big Ten Tournament, after shooting 52% in wins over two teams, Wisconsin and Michigan, that are #2 seeds.
Q. After the Northwestern blowout, I asked you if you thought that ?? since you got everybody healthy, if you had seen a positive, consistent progression, or was it like the stock market, up and down. Now after these next two wins, now can we say the stock market is up?
COACH IZZO: The market is up, yeah. The market is up. That’s what every coach works for is consistency. I’m not sure I’d call three games consistency, but we played pretty well against Iowa. We played decent against Ohio State. If you look at the last five out of six, I think we’ve made some serious strides, even though sometimes it showed, sometimes it didn’t.
You know, players need to feel good, coaches need to feel good. There’s no better way to feel good than to play against the best and compete.
Don’t kid yourself; Wisconsin and Michigan are two great teams. I thought both of them were worthy of being a No.1 seed. Sometimes you’ve got to win at the end, and that changes, at least like it did for us a couple years ago. We were probably a 2 seed and we won it and became a 1. I think if Michigan would have won they would have been a 1 seed, deservedly so. I think if Wisconsin would have won, they would have been a 1 seed, and deservedly so. Michigan State won, and we probably got what we deserved, even though we didn’t play with our full deck. We lost some games, that’s the way it is.
But who cares now? It’s a whole new ballgame
I’ve tried finding a correlation between how Michigan State basketball does in the conference tournament as a predictor of how they’ll do in the Big Dance. In the many years I’ve covered the team, I’ve looked for consistency and it’s not there.
Q. All your Final Four teams that you’ve coached, have you seen any sort of correlation between what those teams did in the conference tournament, and is there a common thread or is there usually no correlation between how you do in the conference tournament versus how you do in the big dance?
COACH IZZO: Yeah, the Spartans have been a little bit strange in that area. We’ve lost the first game and gotten to a Final Four. We’ve won the championship and gotten to a Final Four. We’re diversified, we can do it a lot of different ways.
But I don’t think that’s been a common thread. It’s what that team needs at that time. I said here, the biggest thing we needed was to play three games. We needed more and more games together. We just?? I mean, Appling getting some lobs today, we just couldn’t do that in practice. We’re starting to feel the rhythm again together, and so the more games you play, the better it is.
Other years?? I’ve never wanted to lose right away, but a few teams worn out or something?? and it’s not going to change your seeding much. You look at it differently.
This year it was very important that we moved on, and what does that mean, I don’t know. I don’t worry about what the Big Ten Tournament does. I look at the season, our non?conference schedule. Our conference schedule, I thought, was brutal like everybody else’s in this league.
We will be very well prepared for the NCAA Tournament. Whether that gets us to where I want to go, I don’t know, but I can’t think of a conference that could prepare you more than this one has done. The Big Ten is?? we didn’t get a 1 seed, and I’m sure people will wonder about that. We had two teams that deserved it, and so did the teams that got it. I’m not politicking here; it’s over. And I’m not upset about it. They could have won their way in. We did that once. We lost our way in once.
Paul M. Banks owns The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports. An MBA and Fulbright scholar, he’s also a frequent analyst on multiple news talk radio stations. The former NBC Chicago and Washington Times contributor has also been featured on the History Channel. President Obama follows The Sports Bank on Twitter (@paulmbanks) you should too