Tom Izzo knows more about winning NCAA championships than the other 13 coaches in the Big Ten Conference combined, and that’s not to denigrate the accomplishments of his peers.
Chris Collins got Northwestern to two NCAA Tournaments in a seven-year stretch, after a whole bunch of coaches through nearly 75 years tried and failed to get the Wildcats there once. Steve Pikell has produced four consecutive winning seasons at Rutgers after the program had only four winning seasons in the previous 20 years. Matt Painter of Purdue, Juwan Howard of Michigan and Greg Gard of Wisconsin all have won Big Ten regular-season titles, and Iowa’s Fran McCaffery and Brad Underwood of Illinois have won the league tournament.
Izzo is the only one who has an NCAA title on his resume, which came at the close of the 2000 season. He’s the only Big Ten coach since 1990 to win one. When Steve Fisher won it with Michigan in 1989, Kevin Willard, now head coach at Maryland, was only 13 years old. So we asked Izzo if he could pick out two or three reasons why a conference so accomplished in every other way leagues are measured has found that last big victory so elusive.
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“I’m supposed to have an educated answer, since I’ve been part of the problem,” Izzo told The Sporting News. “I don’t have a good answer. I don’t believe we beat ourselves up. I don’t believe it’s the style of play. There’s been some bad luck; we’ve been part of it. Hell, I think we could have won it in ’20, with Cassius Winston, and we don’t play because of COVID. Things happen, and it has kind of hit our league.
“And I think we deserve a little bit of the punishment. It isn’t a lack of trying. I think I’ve been in three or four Final Fours where there’s been another Big Ten team in it … We’ve been there knocking on the door. We keep knocking on the door, that thing’s going to open again.”
If there is a team in the league this year that can invite itself into the company of Indiana 1987 and Michigan 1989, it is Michigan State 2024.
The Spartans are not the favorite to win this season’s Big Ten title; that distinction belongs to Purdue, which won the B1G double last season and was projected as the league’s No. 1 team by CBS Sports and the Blue Ribbon College Basketball yearbook, and by 24 of the 28 media voters in the poll conducted by the Columbus Dispatch.
And Sparty's prestige was dented by a stunning opening-night overtime loss to James Madison. The Dukes are favored to win the Sun Belt Conference. But it's the Sun Belt Conference.
Michigan State, regardless of that night -- and, in some part, because of it -- appears to be the team best constructed to challenge Kansas, Duke, Marquette, reigning champion Connecticut and, indeed, Purdue as the ruler of this season’s March Madness.
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“Since I’ve been here, since my freshman year, we’ve had spurts where we could show that we could be one of the best teams in the country, and then we don’t live up to that potential,” fifth-year forward Malik Hall told The Sporting News. “But I think every single year that I’ve been at Michigan State, we could have been one of the best teams in the country – if not the best – every single year.
“This year, obviously, I feel that a little bit more.”
Michigan State returns the players who scored 72 percent of the points and played 76 percent of the minutes for last year’s Sweet 16 team. They’ve got the leading scorer (guard Tyson Walker), leader in assists (point guard A.J. Hoggard), leader in blocks (center Mady Sissoko).
And, to that group, Izzo added five-star prospect Xavier Booker, along with high-flying wing Coen Carr and gifted point guard Jeremy Fears. Each might one day find himself chosen in the NBA first round. NCAA champions have had at least one first-round NBA draft pick in their rotation, and the Spartans appear to be the one top Big Ten team that fits that description.
One positive element of the James Madison loss was how confidently Carr performed, and how confident Izzo was in him. In fact, Izzo's one mistake in that game might have been the decision not to start Carr in overtime. He was sent into the game for the later stages of OT and finished with 14 points on 5-of-6 shooting in 28 minutes. Izzo called him "the only guy who played well," according to MLive.com.
Last year’s Spartans struggled with shooting inside the 3-point line, with generating opposing turnovers and with blocking shots. This team should be significantly improved in all of those categories because of the increased dynamism provided by the recruits.
Although Walker transferred in from Northeastern in advance of the 2021-22 season, this is a team largely built on freshman recruits who either just arrived or, more to the point, have stayed and matured through the challenges of the Big Ten and some tough NCAA Tournament defeats.
They led No. 2 seed Duke late in the 2022 NCAAs but couldn’t hold on through the final 5 minutes. They went to overtime with No. 3 seed Kansas State in last year’s Sweet 16 but couldn’t find a defensive answer for pint-sized point guard Markquis Nowell. The experience of battling in those two games against better seeds could help the Spartans if they can – as they should – earn a prominent seed in 2024.
“That’s exactly what I’ve talked to my players about,” Izzo told TSN. “That’s where I think the benefit of not transferring is. The AJ s, the Tysons, the Maliks have been through those successive failures; good enough to be right there, have found a way not to win. So we’ve used that all summer. We’ve talked about: What can we do? Well, what you can do is you can’t miss some free throws. You can’t have a ‘my-bad’ moment.
“There’s nothing wrong with making a mistake, unless you want to advance in the NCAA Tournament. That’s what I’ve tried to preach to them, and they are preaching it to the younger guys.”
It is not at all difficult to find facts or stats to flatter the Big Ten. They’ve produced the most NCAA Tournament entrants this decade, an average of nine per season. They’ve produced the most different Final Four teams this century, tied with the ACC. They’ve produced five Naismith Award winners as national player of the year since 2010, twice as many as any other league.
All of that is important, worthy, and ultimately unfulfilling.
Because everyone’s at the highest level really is playing for one thing.
And the Big Ten hasn’t won that thing in nearly a quarter-century.
“I know that one of us has got to win a national championship to get this thing straightened out,” Izzo said.
He says he has been part of the problem.
There’s no one better positioned to deliver the solution.
