The 2024-25 basketball season certainly exceeded expectations with Michigan State winning the Big Ten regular season championship by a ridiculous three-game margin and then advancing all the way to the Elite 8. What makes that season even more impressive is that Tom Izzo was basically breaking in a whole new coaching staff. One assistant, Doug Wojcik, was elevated to the associate head coach role, while three other – Jon Borovich, Austin Thornton, and Saddi Washington – were either in their first
year at MSU or their first year as an assistant coach. Thomas Kelley was the only coach, other than Izzo, returning to the same role.
Tom Izzo, the 2016 Hall of Fame inductee, completed his 30th season as MSU’s head coach in 2024-25. Not only did he win his 11th Big Ten Championship and earn a trip to his 11th Elite 8, but along the way he also broke Bob Knight’s record for Big Ten conference wins. You can objectively say he is the best coach in the history of Big Ten hoops. The good news for us Spartans is that he seems to still have plenty of gas in the tank. His recruiting has been as good as it ever was these last few years, and he is still putting out a championship product on the court.
Doug Wojcik is by far the most experienced member of Izzo’s staff. He has been a coach for over 30 years, is going into his 10th season overall at Michigan State and 8th consecutive season. He was also on the staff in 2003-05. Last year, his first after being promoted to associate head coach, Doug was given the Big Ten Conference Howard Moore Assistant Coach of the Year Award. His prior head coaching experience (nine years between Tulsa and College of Charleston) have helped Coach Wojcik become an excellent recruiter. Tom Izzo relies on Wojcik for help in this area more so than any other member of the coaching staff. As associate head coach, he is also the coach who most closely advises Tom during games and is largely responsible for managing the rotation.
Next in seniority on the MSU bench is Thomas Kelley, who became an MSU assistant ahead of the 2022-23 season. Kelley previously was a grad assistant for Coach Izzo from 2015-18. Years earlier, he played for MSU, first under Jud Heathcote and ultimately wrapping up his college career as a part of Izzo’s first Final Four team in ‘98-99. Coach Kelley’s primary role on the staff is to scout upcoming opponents in order to help create the game plans. He also works closely with the team’s guards, and has helped three players earn All-Big Ten honors – Tyson Walker (2x), AJ Hoggard (2x), and Jaden Akins. And, of course, he also contributed to Jase Richardson’s rapid rise to best player on the team and All-Big Ten Freshman honors last season. This year, we will be looking to see the jump in Jeremy Fears Jr’s game as well as to see if either Kur Teng or Trey Fort can become a serviceable starting shooting guard in order to evaluate Kelley’s performance.
Like Thomas Kelley, Jon Borovich was a grad assistant at MSU, in his case all the way back from 2001-03. He would go on to be an assistant coach at a number of different programs, and eventually made his way back to East Lansing just before the 2022-23 season to become Director of Recruiting Operations. After two seasons in that role, Izzo moved Borovich to an assistant coach position ahead of last season. Borovich does assist with recruiting still, but now his primary function is to help Tom develop the offensive system. So when we see those stretches of a game where MSU goes into isolation and no one is moving around and there is no ball rotation, well that is on Jon. Hopefully, MSU can improve their scoring from last year when they were 8th in the Big Ten and 79th nationally at 77.7 PPG.
Joining Borovich in year two as an assistant coach after moving from a non-coaching position is Austin Thornton. Thornton, an MSU player from 2007-12, was the video coordinator three seasons before getting his promotion a season ago. He wears a number of hats for Michigan State including defensive game planning and opponent scouting. He has also taken on the responsibility of overseeing the student managers and grad assistants. And Austin is also credited with the creation of Grind Week, a newer MSU tradition that Jase Richardson cited as the thing that made him ultimately pick MSU over Alabama.
Lastly, we have Saddi Washington. Saddi came to East Lansing for the 2024-25 season having previously being on the staff of Juwan Howard at u*m. But Washington does have MSU connections as his father, Stan, was a player here back in the 60s. Actually, he was a very good player. Saddi also contributes to creating the defensive plan and also works primarily with MSU’s interior players. Hopefully the big leaps we saw last year from both Jaxon Kohler and Carson Cooper are indicative of Washington’s talents as a coach.
While there is a lot of turnover to the MSU roster for the upcoming season, the coaching staff is entirely the same as last year. If last year, with a hodgepodge coaching crew, we made the Elite 8, perhaps this year with a staff more familiar with each other and more entrenched in their individual roles we will go even further. After all, we still have Tom Izzo (and his 8 Final Fours) running the show.
