EAST LANSING – It has been a while.
More than a while, actually, if we’re talking about making a Final Four, or a possible national championship, as just about everybody in and around the Michigan State basketball program is at the moment.
Tom Izzo has that kind of roster. That kind of depth. That kind of size. That kind of point guard.
He’s had these before, of course. It has just been, again, a while
.
A while since Izzo's last Final Four (2019), since a serious expectation of one – no, his 2024-25 team doesn’t count there; no one saw freshman guard Jase Richardson coming, including Izzo, and he often said it.
Also, that team wasn’t anyone’s Final Four favorite
before the season, or even when the NCAA bracket came out, even though the Spartans had won the Big Ten regular-season title by three games.
Auburn was the pick, the No. 1 overall seed (which turned out to be the right pick), and when the Tigers beat the Spartans in the regional final in Atlanta, and Tigers coach Bruce Pearl met with reporters, here is what he said:
“I felt going in that we were better. I felt like I had better players. That's not a criticism at all.”
How could it be? It was the truth.
And it has been every time the Spartans have lost in the tournament the past six years; other teams just had better players. If they were at their best, MSU was going to lose.
Izzo might have had an argument a year ago against Connecticut; his best player, Jeremy Fears Jr., wore down, in part because injuries took out his backcourt depth late in the season. But even accounting for that, the Huskies had just a little more, and that made the difference in the Sweet 16 loss.
This year could be different. Might be different. Should be different.
No, it’s not a guarantee of anything. Izzo knows this well. He lost to Middle Tennessee State in the first round in 2016, and his team had better players. The same happened when he lost to UConn in the Elite Eight in 2014, though that team had injury issues.
Sometimes, you just get beat, like MSU did when it lost to Texas Tech in the Final Four in 2019 – the last time the Spartans had the talent to stay with anybody and everybody.
They just lost that night. Got outplayed in a few key moments. Missed a corner 3-pointer.
It happens.
The criticism these days comes because “it happens” hasn’t happened frequently enough for the Green and White. It’s not just the Final Four drought – the longest of Izzo’s 31 seasons at MSU. It’s that over the last six years, he hasn’t walked into a gym enough times with a team that could stay with anyone, even if they were at their best.
He's had a few that were Final-Four good if they’d gotten a few breaks, or the right path; matchups can be everything. 2023 comes to mind, when he lost to Kansas State in the Sweet 16 in Madison Square Garden. That team wasn’t going to beat UConn, the eventual champ, but it was good enough to beat Kansas State and make a Final Four. They just needed a couple of breaks.
'I love the players I've got'
Yes, that’s true most seasons – and as Izzo pointed out Thursday, Oct. 15, when he held the Spartans' media day – even champs need a little luck, even if it’s injury luck; rare is the team like Michigan last season with three lottery picks in the frontcourt and had another potential lottery pick coming off the bench, as the Wolverines blitzed their way to a title.
Izzo has had teams good enough to get to a Final Four – or even win that elusive, second national title – and the other team just made a couple more plays. Those squads didn’t lose because they weren’t talented enough.
He just hasn’t had one of those teams in a while.
This is why, back in spring 2024, Izzo stood in the hallway outside his team’s locker room at an arena in North Carolina after his Spartans had lost in the second round – their fourth straight year missing a Final Four – and said he was going to get his program back where it belonged or die trying.
That next year, MSU won the Big Ten by three games and got to the Elite Eight. Last year, the Spartans got to the Sweet 16. Neither run should be considered the kind of run Izzo envisioned when he said those words in North Carolina.
But they were a start, and his best, two-year stretch since Cassius Winston was manning the point. Now it’s time to build on that, to take the final step. That Detroit is hosting this season's Final Four only adds to the urgency, and pressure.
If MSU finds its way there, it would add to the narrative, too. That he can still do it his way, recruiting high schoolers, developing them, using the transfer portal sparingly. That what he believes is the winning way is actually compatible with winning.
“I love the players I’ve got,” he said Thursday, “all but one [Charlotte transfer center Anton Bonke] is homegrown. To me, that’s important. To other people, it’s not. I really don’t give a damn how people do it, I just care what I do.”
And what he’s done is give himself a chance – on paper – in a way he hasn’t in a while. He’s mixing youth (and a top-five recruiting class) with veterans with a couple of tweeners who appear ready for breakout seasons.
Yeah, he’ll need a break – or three. And yeah, he has to figure out how it all fits; his roster is arguably 12 deep, and that can make for some tough choices for minutes. He’ll also need to weather his usual difficult schedule (which includes Arkansas, Duke, Gongaga and Tennessee).
If he can get all that, he’ll have the chance to do something memorable and keep building on the promise he made in that hallway outside the locker room in North Carolina. It has been a while.
It’s also about time.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
Next up: Huskies
Matchup: Michigan State (27-8 in 2025-26) vs. UConn (34-6 in 2025-26); exhibition.
Tipoff: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 20; Breslin Center, East Lansing.
TV/radio: No TV; WJR-AM (760).
Streaming: B1G+.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tom Izzo likes his Michigan State basketball team – a lot
