This isn't Tom Izzo's greatest March masterpiece
By Matt Zemek
It is very easy to think that any particularly special achievement — enhanced by the adrenaline or excitement you feel in the present moment — is the best ever.
Once in a great while, the euphoria and breathlessness surrounding a given sports moment are not out of step with a genuine analytical appraisal of what just happened.
The 2008 Wimbledon gentlemen’s singles final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer really does hold up as a match worthy of being considered the best of all time. The 2006 Rose Bowl and the 2007 Fiesta Bowl — not yet a decade old — really did seem to be on the very short short list of the greatest college football games ever played, and their reputations have not been eroded by Father Time. The 1992 Duke-Kentucky East Regional final is still regarded by most as the best college basketball games ever played. A more fascinating question is how Saturday’s Notre Dame-Kentucky game will be perceived three, six, or ten years from now. The discussion of that game is just beginning, and it probably won’t develop until after the Final Four. Should Kentucky win the national title, that game will grow in stature, and rightly so.
The point is clear: Some sporting events actually do manage to pass the “all-time” test in the present moment, but such examples are rare.
As we begin to look at the Final Four in a historical context, then, let’s consider this question: Has Tom Izzo done his very best work this season, compared to his six previous Final Four seasons at Michigan State?
You could very convincingly answer yes, so it’s not as though this is an open-and-shut case. However, a more extensive examination suggests that Izzo’s best job in East Lansing came 10 years ago.
Izzo is one of the best “second game of a weekend” coaches in the NCAA tournament, meaning that he is extremely hard to beat in the round of 32 (13-1 all-time) and the Elite Eight (7-2). You can do the simple math and realize that Izzo — in pre-Final Four second games — is 20-3. That is absurd. No one prepares better with a short turnaround than he does. The three “second game of a weekend” losses, by the way?
1) Losing a regional final as a 7 seed to top-seeded Texas in San Antonio in 2003.
2) Losing in the round of 32 as a 9 seed to top-seeded North Carolina in Winston-Salem, N.C., another virtual road game.
3) Losing in the regional final last year as a 4 seed to seventh-seeded Connecticut, which played what amounted to a home game before a deafening pro-Husky crowd in Madison Square Garden.
In any Izzo run to the Final Four, you can point to great coaching performances. The man hardly ever fails when he wins that first game on a weekend.
In terms of a full NCAA tournament run, though, which year stands out the most?
A quick survey of Izzo’s seven Final Four seasons should cut the list down to two: 2005 and 2015.
Four times, Michigan State made the Final Four as a top-two seed (three times as a 1 seed, once as a 2 seed in 2009). Three times, the Spartans have reached the Final Four as a 5 seed or lower (twice as a 5, once as a 7, this season). In 2010, Michigan State’s journey to the Final Four as a 5 seed featured a path paved with gold. Ninth-seeded Northern Iowa bumped off top-seeded Kansas, enabling Izzo to face a lower seed in the Sweet 16. In the other half of that year’s Midwest (St. Louis) Regional, sixth-seeded Tennessee defeated second-seeded Ohio State in the Sweet 16, enabling Michigan State to wear home whites yet again in the Elite Eight. Michigan State’s Final Four seed path that March was 12-4-9-6, a fortuitous series of circumstances.
The two best Izzo orchestrations in March are 2005 and 2015. You have been able to absorb this year’s run by Michigan State, so let’s go back to 2005.
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