'Spartan strong' Michigan State back in Sweet 16 as Tom Izzo's team delivers again in March

The first words Tom Izzo said after yet another upset, another signature March moment, another affirmation of the remarkable program he’s built over nearly three decades were unmistakable in their meaning. 

“It’s been a long year,” he said on CBS amid the jubilation of Michigan State’s 69-60 victory over Marquette.

He wasn’t talking just about basketball.

Five weeks ago, a 43-year old gunman entered Berkey Hall on Michigan State’s campus and fired shots that hit seven students killing two of them. Then the murderer went into the student union and fired more shots, taking another young life before killing himself later that night. 

Two days later, on the night Michigan State was supposed to play a basketball game against Minnesota, Izzo instead stood up in front of the student body at a candlelight vigil and poured out his heart for nearly eight minutes. 

“Virtually all of my adult life, I’ve been a Spartan,” Izzo said that night. “I’ve seen some incredible highs, and yes, unfortunately there have been some devastating lows. But as a Spartan, we always get through it together.

“We are Spartan tough, Spartan strong. If you need proof, look at all of us standing here tonight. Emotions are different for each and every person. I cry in front of my team. I cry on national TV. Don’t be afraid to show your emotions. We all process trauma in a very different way. I’m just glad we’re all here together tonight.”

It was real. It was raw. And it was pure Izzo, a man who has done nothing but devote his days, his sweat and his love to a university he’s tried his best to represent with a basketball team that reflects the character and the toughness he sees in the place he loves most.

That is why this trip to the Sweet 16, perhaps as much or more than the 14 before it under Izzo, will carry a special meaning for Michigan State. At a time when the place he loves needs normalcy and joy the most, Izzo’s team delivered in the same way they have so many times in March. 

Ranked outside the top 25 for most of the season, Michigan State would not have been considered much of a threat to get to the Sweet 16 except for one thing: They have Izzo on the sidelines.

No matter what kind of personnel Izzo has or what kind of regular season Michigan State just completed, the Spartan logo is nightmare fuel for opposing coaches when the NCAA Tournament brackets are revealed on Selection Sunday.

It’s not that Izzo is unbeatable or has an ironclad track record in March. Like every other great coach, he’s had his share of surprising flameouts. But every few years, Izzo finds a way to push a team deeper into the tournament than it’s supposed to go. 

The formula isn’t a secret. Izzo will scheme a defense to take away what an opponent does best. And when games get tight in the second half, which they tend to do in this tournament, toughness wins. 

That is essentially how Michigan State defeated No. 2 seeded Marquette, which scored just 60 points despite being one of the best offensive teams in the country all season. Even for a coach with a lot of March masterpieces in his repertoire, Izzo was impressed.

“That was a war,” he said. “That was a 2000 game. It felt like Mateen Cleaves. It was a physical game.”

For Izzo, there could be no higher  compliment to his own team than to invoke 2000, the team that delivered his only national title. 

Could this group possibly be the one to give him a second?

For a team coached by anyone else, it would seem unlikely. Based on the analytics, Michigan State is a fairly pedestrian team: Ranked outside the top 30 on both offense and defense, the Spartans struggled to beat the better teams on their schedule. And playing at one of the slowest paces in the nation, they weren’t always a joy to watch. 

But Sunday was the 16th time Izzo has beaten a higher-seeded team in the NCAA Tournament, beating out Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim for the all-time record. Perhaps more impressively, it was the sixth time he has gotten to the Sweet 16 with a team seeded fifth or worse.

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And now that the Spartans are here, why can’t they do something even crazier?

Headed to New York for the East Regional, Michigan State will face a Kansas State team that has wildly outperformed expectations under first-year head coach Jerome Tang. And if the Spartans can get by that one, they'd face either Florida Atlantic or a Tennessee team that struggled at the end of the regular season without injured point guard Zakai Zeigler. 

“We’ve still got some dancing to do,” Izzo said. “After watching the tournament, it doesn’t matter who we play, when we play, where we play or how, it’s going to be a hell of a game. And I’m looking forward to it.”

As Izzo would be the first to acknowledge, the joy in this moment does not change the awful reality that so many people at Michigan State have been dealing with since the tragic night of Feb. 13. When he says he’s just the basketball coach, he’s one of the few who actually mean it. 

But nobody over the last 25 years has represented the ethos of Michigan State to a national audience the way Izzo does in March. It’s a basketball identity intertwined with the place itself, which is why it seemed so natural for Izzo to act as consoler when his community was deeply hurting.

So when he said that it had been a long season, you could see on his face immediately what that meant. Winning a basketball game can’t make that better. But on Sunday, Izzo reminded us once again both why he’s one of college basketball’s greatest coaches and, for Michigan State, why he represents something even bigger than that.