IOWA CITY, Iowa — Tom Izzo wasn’t talking about a Big Ten championship when, last March, he promised he would restore Michigan State’s basketball program to its old ways or “die trying.” But it was essentially part of the package.
Izzo has always measured the eliteness of his program on two things — deep runs in the NCAA tournament and Big Ten titles. One challenges his program’s ability to handle quick turnarounds and all sorts of matchups during a thrilling three-week sprint in the national spotlight. The other speaks to his team’s ability to withstand the grind and adversity of a 20-game Big Ten season, Saturday nights in Champaign through Thursdays in Iowa City. Izzo earned the moniker of Mr. March during his eight Final Four runs. But winning the month of January and February 11 times now has brought him every bit as much satisfaction.
You wouldn’t know it to listen to him after Thursday night’s 91-84 win at Iowa — after the Spartans won the Big Ten championship outright. But Izzo’s orneriness in the face of great achievement is probably how we can be sure that MSU basketball is actually back.
Izzo spent much of Thursday’s postgame press conference sticking up for Iowa coach Fran McCaffery and chastising his own team’s approach to the first half of the game. He was in his element. His own house in order, he leaned back, put his arms over the two chairs on each side of him and defended his friend, another Big Ten coach whose sins include not being able to live up to Izzo’s standard. And, after MSU’s 25th win of the season and 16th in conference play, Izzo tried be upset with a group of players who have brought him and MSU fans so much joy over the last few months.
“I felt we got a little selfish, little full of ourselves,” Izzo said. “I did not appreciate that.
“Who in the hell said we were so good? Not me?”
The standings, Tom. The standings.
MSU hadn’t won an outright Big Ten championship since 2018 or claimed any share of a Big Ten title since March 8, 2020, days before the world shut down.
The pandemic is finally over for MSU basketball.
“Am I happy we won the Big Ten? I’m ecstatic,” Izzo said, sounding like he’d just scheduled a 7 a.m. dentist appointment. “I’ll be ecstatic when I walk out of this building, until I get to the plane and then (that’s it) because it’s Michigan week, so we start preparing for them right away. But I’m not going to sit here and sugarcoat it and tell you I’m excited how we played just because we won, because that’s not going to get us anywhere I think we can go and need to go (in the postseason). If we start shooting the ball better, we have a chance, as long as our defense continues to do what it did (in the second half) tonight.”
When pressed, Izzo came around, recognizing what’s been accomplished by a group that began the season unheralded.
“Every championship team has a stinker or two and we really haven’t,” Izzo said. “Our consistency has been unbelievable. And that’s a great credit to my staff and those players. But tonight was an eye-opener on what happens if you deviate from who you are, and I think it’s good lesson for all of us. But when I do walk out of this room here and just sit by myself in my locker room for a minute … to win it outright …”
It’s been a remarkable run — by a team that’s grown and evolved like very few teams do during the course of a season. This is the same MSU team that in November used a narrow loss to Kansas and an overtime victory over North Carolina as measuring sticks. The latter was celebrated. The Jayhawks and Tar Heels are both having miserable seasons by their standards, each with 11 losses already. MSU grew into something far greater than the team it was then. This is also an MSU team that won 13 straight games and started 9-0 in the Big Ten, but whose ceiling was rightly doubted because the teeth of their conference schedule was yet to be played. And, when the Spartans lost three or four games in early February, they had to grow and change again.
This team went from Jaden Akins’ team, to Jeremy Fears’ team, to Jase Richardson’s team. It’s a team that took off when it found its star and its alpha offensively.
“As a teammate, it’s been so amazing to watch him game after game after game make incredible plays and winning plays,” MSU junior Jaxon Kohler said Thursday night of Richardson. “He’s had such a special season overall. But this back half of it has just been something that I really haven’t seen before.”
Nearly as important, Akins, who dreamed of a Denzel Valentine-like senior season, has gotten over himself. When he misses his first six 3s, like he did Thursday, he doesn’t go into a shell, like he did against Kansas. Instead, he made 3 of 4 from deep to end the game at Iowa, and his defense didn’t waver. His legacy, while not as an all-time great, will be attached to the team he helped propel as a senior, and to the program he helped to reinvigorate.
Junior Tre Holloman might go down as one of the most beloved players in program history. He’s been an essential guard, on and off the ball, a willing team player, coming off the bench to make room for Richardson in the starting lineup. He’s one who could handle that, Izzo said. Holloman’s been there in big moments, hitting memorable shots, and, increasingly, he’s the Spartans’ swagger and their edge — like Thursday, when, with the Spartans trailing 58-50, he had a few choice words for Iowa’s Brock Harding, and Holloman’s tenacity seemed to ignite his teammates.
“(The Iowa players) were talking a little bit and I guess that just brought out the fire,” Holloman said.
MSU’s big men, which held the program back in recent years, have largely been up to the task. Carson Cooper has grown into the season. Kohler has become an elite rebounder. They, with transfer Szymon Zapala, have given MSU the thing it had lacked since Xavier Tillman left — presence.
Coen Carr — who played three different positions Thursday, including center — has made massive strides on both ends of the court since last season and during this season. He had four blocks Thursday and, in one critical stretch, two fast-break dunks and a drive by a defender for a bucket at the rim, a skilled play to give the Spartans a 61-60 lead, just before they took control.
This was an intriguing team in Spain last August, a promising team by the end of November, a good team with a high floor in January. This is a great team now — in the second halves of games and down the stretch at least. You’re not the No. 5 defense in the nation, via Kenpom, if you can’t lock people down and wear them out. You don’t win at Illinois, against Purdue, at Michigan, at Maryland, home against Wisconsin and then overcome a 14-point deficit against a proud and desperate Iowa team on the road — in six consecutive games — if you don’t have a little something special to you.
“I thought we found a new level of fight (in February),” Richardson said. “I think there’s a lot of fight to this team.”
“We never give up in terms of finding that edge, finding that play that can turn a game,” Kohler said. “And no matter how bad it seems, no matter how much we’re trailing, how bad we’re playing in the moment … we don’t accept defeat.”
This is one of the great seasons of Izzo’s tenure. Not just for the accomplishment — outright Big Ten champs, with a game to spare, no less, and in the first year of the expanded Big Ten.
But also for fulfilling a promise he made — and doing so in just 349 days and without dying trying. And for how this team has done it — truly as a collective, staying hungry and likable, while playing a style that embodies the origins of the Izzo era.
That now includes being Big Ten champs.
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on X @Graham_Couch and BlueSky @GrahamCouch.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Michigan State basketball: How MSU grew into becoming Big Ten champs
