EAST LANSING, Mich. — Tom Izzo has a complicated relationship with nostalgia right now.
The Michigan State coach turned 70 on Jan. 30, in the midst of his 30th season with the Spartans. Seventeen days later, he broke Bob Knight’s record for Big Ten career victories with his 354th. Last week, the Basketball Hall of Famer tied Knight and former Purdue coach Ward Lambert for the most regular-season Big Ten championships with his 11th. The Big Ten tournament tipped off Wednesday in Indianapolis, and Izzo and the Spartans face Oregon aiming for his seventh title, which would add to his league record.
Next week, Izzo will lead Michigan State into the NCAA tournament for the 27th consecutive time, seeking his first national title in 25 years.
All the landmarks and anniversaries could stir sentimental feelings about the past, but Izzo isn’t wired that way.
“You don’t hang banners for milestones,” Izzo told ESPN. “You hang banners for championships.”
Izzo would gladly trade any of the individual accolades he has collected this year or in recent seasons for the one that has eluded him and Michigan State since 2000. He’s easily the best coach without multiple national titles, while reaching eight Final Fours.
“Once he broke that record, the Bob Knight record, it was quickly celebrated around here,” Spartans freshman guard Jase Richardson said. “We had our little moment for him. Next day, he’s not focused on that. He’s focused on the next game. I definitely can see that dedication of him trying to get another championship.”
There is a part of nostalgia that Izzo loves, which includes coaching Richardson. The emerging star’s father is former Spartans great Jason Richardson, a freshman on Izzo’s 2000 national title team who became an All-American and a top-five NBA draft pick. Jason Richardson has been with the team much of the season to see Jase play. So have many other former players, who delight their former coach when they show up.
MSU honored the 1999-2000 team before the Oregon game on Feb. 8, which brought Mateen Cleaves, Morris Peterson and other standouts back to campus. Even those who didn’t suit up for Izzo have come around, including Magic Johnson, star of the 1979 national championship team, who attended MSU’s Feb. 4 win at UCLA. Johnson reminded Izzo that achievements, team or individual, ripen with age.
“That was about as good a statement as you get,” Izzo said. “I’m sure these things will mean more to me as time passes, and some day, if I retire, I’m sure they’ll mean more.”
Izzo is also in the longest Final Four drought of his head coaching career, but he has a team poised for a deep tournament run to potentially reach his first Final Four since 2019. Many thought Izzo’s second title would come soon after his first, but there would be a special satisfaction to win it now, when he’s in a different phase of life, and college basketball has undergone major changes.
“It’s a lot harder to coach today than it was 25 years ago,” he said.
Can this version of Tom Izzo win it all in this version of college basketball? The answer will come in a month that has defined Izzo’s career.
Before last week’s trip to Iowa, Izzo stood along the sideline of Michigan State’s practice court, hands on his thighs, eyes glued to the proceedings. He moved around throughout the two-hour practice but always returned to the two-point stance, like a linebacker awaiting the snap.
Assistant coach Jon Borovich led the walk-through portion, but Izzo interjected at times. After a defensive sequence, Izzo told center Szymon Zapala to move his man further from the basket.
“Knock him on his ass,” Izzo said.
When the scout team hit a step-back 3-pointer, Izzo stepped in to remind the group, “There are no good misses, there are no lucky makes. We’ve gotta stop those shots in practice and in the game.”
Later on in the workout, Marquise Gray, who played for Michigan State from 2004 to ’09, arrived and bear-hugged his old coach. Izzo later told reporters that Gray had asked him if he was on the third practice of the day.
“I said, ‘No, no, Quise, that’s illegal again now,'” Izzo said.
Izzo misses the way it used to be. His war drill, a competitive rebounding sequence, once featured basketball players wearing football gear loaned by former Spartans coach Nick Saban. Jason Richardson called that practice “one of my best,” and has told Jase all about it.
“He had a total different experience and a totally different Izzo,” Jase Richardson said of his dad.
Izzo knows he can’t bring back the helmets and shoulder pads.
“Greatest thing they ever talked about,” Izzo said of his former players. “You know, we had fun. It’s almost like you can’t have fun anymore.”
Izzo still enjoys practice, though, especially with his current team. The slogan above the practice court — “Strength In Numbers” — fits a group without many All-America candidates or top-end NBA prospects. Only three players were ESPN top-25 recruits, and none were in the top 15.
The Spartans don’t lead the Big Ten in fewest points allowed, rebounds or assists, but they rank among the top three in each category. They aren’t an explosive offense, and they rank last in the league in 3-point shooting percentage, but they’ve found enough scoring — from different sources — when needed.
“You can go back to 25 years ago with the national championship team — his teams are not going to beat themselves,” said ESPN analyst Tom Crean, an Izzo assistant from 1995 to ’99 who went on to lead Marquette, Indiana and Georgia. “They may lose, but they’re not going to give the game away because they made silly turnovers or tried to take shots that they couldn’t make, or they were out of character when it’s time to win the game. That doesn’t mean he’s always going to win. It means that he’s always going to have a chance.
“That something that’s been building for a long, long time.”
When asked how his current team stacks up with the 1999-2000 squad, which featured five future NBA draft picks, Izzo is direct.
“I don’t think they’re as talented, player for player,” he said. “The togetherness, the camaraderie, the defense, was good back then; it might be a little better now. The rebounding was really good back then; it might be as good now.”
The current team shares another trait with the national championship squad: an acceptance to be coached the way Izzo wants — and needs — to operate.
“We don’t take it the wrong way,” senior guard Jaden Akins said. “You’ve definitely got to be able to take some criticism. He’s not just going to be quiet anytime you make a mistake. But I feel like you have to just listen to what he’s saying, not how he’s saying it. He knows what he’s talking about, and if you want to win, you need to listen.”
There’s a willingness among those receiving the message, but also for the man delivering it.
Five years ago, Michigan State entered the Big Ten tournament on a five-game winning streak. The Spartans had beaten five of their previous six ranked opponents and, in Izzo’s estimation, had the ingredients for a deep NCAA tournament push. But then COVID-19 struck and the postseason was canceled.
The next four seasons brought subpar results, at least by Izzo’s standards. MSU went 41-38 in Big Ten play, never finishing higher than fourth. The Spartans reached the Sweet 16 in 2023 as a No. 7 seed but rarely resembled a title contender. The stretch also coincided with major changes in college athletics, from name, image and likeness and the transfer portal to an overall atmosphere in which players carried more leverage.
Izzo had to pivot, and there were some struggles.
“I was not demanding,” he said. “I did not hold them accountable enough. In my mind, I let some things go.”
He paused.
“If I don’t like you, that’s a problem,” he said. “If I don’t like me, that’s a real problem, and I didn’t like me.”
Izzo looked at how other coaches operate, such as Saban, who won seven national titles in college football, and six-time Super Bowl champion Bill Belichick. He listened as Johnson told him how Pat Riley motivated the “Showtime” Lakers. Despite pushing 70, he made adjustments to how he coached.
When Jason Richardson and his former teammates came around this season, they ribbed Izzo about how he’s getting soft and yelling less. The yelling still happens, but Izzo also communicates more with players.
“This guy has a track record. Why wouldn’t you listen to him?” Cleaves said. “We listened to him when he didn’t have a track record. Now, he’s proven. If you come in there and listen and buy in, you can go to Final Fours, you can win conference championships, you have a chance to win a national championship.”
Older players such as Akins and junior center Carson Cooper have seen the differences in Izzo, even in the tone of his voice when addressing the team. As Izzo puts it, the players are getting both his human side and his passion.
The result has been a more connected team. Last season, Michigan State lost 10 games by seven points or fewer. The current Spartans are 7-3 in such games. They won a team-record 17 Big Ten games and posted their highest regular-season wins total (26) since 2017-18.
They’ve also delivered magical moments, such as Tre Holloman’s buzzer-beater from beyond half court to beat Maryland in College Park on Feb 26. Michigan State’s midseason 13-game winning streak matched its longest since the 2018-19 season, and the team went undefeated in December and January for the first time under Izzo.
“The last two years, he was kind of letting some stuff go that was monumental to our success,” Cooper said. “This year, he’s shut all that down. He told himself that all those little things can cost us.”
Izzo also is trying to not let state-of-the-game things bother him as much. He served on committees with Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski and other notable coaches about the changes coming to college sports, and he brooded over what he heard and later saw.
He might not fully embrace every element of college basketball’s new world, but he’s still living in it.
“I’m trying to live what I believe,” Izzo said, “and yet adjust.”
In August, Michigan State traveled to Spain for 10 days, bouncing from Madrid to Valencia to Barcelona for games. Jason Richardson tagged along and saw how players pulled for one another on the court and laughed with each other off of it. The group reminded him of his own MSU teams.
“This team is going to surprise you,'” Richardson told the crowd at the Michigan State Madness preseason event. “They’re going to shock you.'”
Cleaves has seen the players’ connection when he has been around them. He texts with several players after games and spoke in the locker room after the Oregon win, surrounded by his former teammates.
“I said, ‘Look at this. This is special,'” Cleaves recalled. “When you do something special like winning the championship, you’ll never forget it for the rest of your life. It’s not about you. I did it all at Michigan State. I was a three-time All-American, Big Ten Player of the Year two times, got drafted with the 14 pick in the NBA. Man, it’s about winning. What means more to me than anything is winning the national championship.”
Cooper hung onto every word. Although he and his teammates weren’t alive when MSU won in 2000, he grew up not far from campus in Jackson and recognizes what Spartans basketball means in the area.
He enjoys witnessing Izzo’s milestones in real time, even while his coach is “desperate as ever” to win another national title.
“What really hit me hard was that 25th anniversary, seeing all those guys coming back,” Cooper said. “It really makes me think that 25 years from now, I want to be able to come back here and see all these guys again and have these memories to share.”
Izzo probably won’t be coaching in 2050, although you never know.
“Tom Izzo can take a punch,” Crean said. “You’ve been at it as long as he has, that is a serious 15-round fight that he’s still in. But it ain’t gonna end at 15 rounds. It ain’t gonna end anytime soon. He loves it too much, and he’s still so relevant with his team and players.”
Izzo has watched several of his national championship-winning peers exit in recent years — Williams, Krzyzewski, Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim, Villanova’s Jay Wright and Virginia’s Tony Bennett. He thinks their presence is missed in the sport.
He loved the way his friend Saban retired from Alabama, grinding until the end without any send-off.
“There will be no farewell tour,” he said of his own departure. “It will be, ‘Adios.’ Saban was perfect.”
Izzo will have a game plan for retirement, but only if triggered by certain factors, including his health, which remains good. When he can’t take a red-eye from Las Vegas to Orlando for an AAU game, he’s out. When he can no longer connect with players and form meaningful relationships, he’s out. But that time hasn’t come.
His original goal as a head coach was to be consistent and relevant, always within reach of a championship. Would he like more titles? Sure. If Alan Anderson didn’t injure his knee late in an Elite Eight win over Kentucky in 2005, maybe the Spartans would have won it all that year. Maybe if MSU had run into anyone other than North Carolina in 2009, it would have claimed a championship in Detroit. But Izzo also pointed out that if Cincinnati’s Kenyon Martin didn’t break his leg in the conference tournament in 2000, perhaps the Spartans wouldn’t have gone on to win.
March has been glorious and cruel for Izzo, but he looks forward to another championship push. The sport has changed and so has he, but the mission remains the same.
“I kind of started to like this challenge a little bit,” he said. “Can we still knock on the door in a different way? I just want to coach my team, I’d like to win another championship sometime, and I’d like to get guys to live their dream, because I got to live mine.”
