EAST LANSING — Tom Izzo started reminiscing about senior days past, about how the vibe over the years for different Michigan State basketball players has produced a variety of results with the emotions of the day.
Some have been memorable, like Mateen Cleaves and Morris Peterson’s final-game blowout win at Breslin Center against Michigan in 2000. Some have been forgettable, like the buzzer-beating Ohio State victory in 2012 that dampened Draymond Green’s farewell and prevented the Spartans from an outright Big Ten title.
“There's something about your last game that those memories usually last a little longer. So I don't know how they'll take it. That's how I'd take it if I was them,” Izzo said. “But it's not my last game.”
That might have been a subtle hint to a subset of MSU’s fanbase that Izzo plans to be there again for next year’s senior day — and potentially beyond — but that’s speculation for the future. The present for him and his team is filled with plenty of outside criticism about their fluctuating and frustrating performance entering the final week of the regular season and Wednesday night’s senior sayonara against Northwestern (7 p.m./BTN).
It is the type of pressure that, 29 years into his Hall of Fame coaching career, Izzo continues to embrace. Even as his record 25 straight NCAA tournament appearances potentially could be in jeopardy amid the Spartans’ ongoing three-game losing streak. To prevent that, Izzo understands finishing strong would solidify the case for an at-large bid a necessity and to prevent MSU from having win the Big Ten tournament to qualify.
FOLLOW THE MADNESS: NCAA tournament brackets, scores, schedules, teams and more.
THE BRIGHT SIDE:Tom Izzo hopes MSU learned one thing in tight loss to No. 3 Purdue
“It's just like I say to myself, I have to take responsibility if my team doesn't play as good as they can play. And I have,” Izzo said during his weekly news conference on Monday. “I don't hide behind that elephant, either. And that is a big, big white elephant because there's 600,000 small elephants that are kind of putting it to me. And I really wouldn't want it any other way. Whether you believe that or not.
“It's like I stated to my team the other day, somebody said, well, if somebody gets mad or gets mad in a huddle, for me, I love that. Then I know that it matters. It's when I don't know that it matters that frustrates me. I can deal with the consequences of somebody losing it a little bit or this or that. As long as I know that it's the most important thing in the world, I'm cool with it.”
After MSU’s 80-74 loss Saturday at No. 3 Purdue, Izzo said he could see his team continuing to fight hard and play better following back-to-back home losses to Iowa and Ohio State. He also said the program he built into a national powerhouse does not have the luxury of banking on moral victories. His Spartans were ranked No. 4 in preseason polls, quickly fell out of the rankings and are now 17-12 and 9-9 in Big Ten play heading into the final two games against the Wildcats (20-9, 11-7), who beat them by 14 points on the road in early January, and the regular-season finale at Indiana on Sunday.
Izzo’s record over the past four years is 76-51 overall and 40-37 in league play. It is the first time in his career in which MSU has lost double-digit games in four consecutive seasons. It also is the longest stretch in his tenure without a top-three Big Ten finish, the last title in 2020 capping a three-year run of winning at least a share of the conference championship.
On Saturday night, the Spartans watched Purdue celebrate a second straight league title on its home court. Instead of playing for a championship, they will be attempting to avoid losing three straight at Breslin for the first time since 1997. That year, Izzo’s second year as head coach, MSU lost to Illinois, Michigan and Purdue and finished 17-12. MSU missed the NCAAs, playing in the NIT for a second straight season.
His program has not missed the NCAA tournament since.
“There's pressure playing for (Izzo). With everything that he's accomplished, you don't want to be on the wrong side of history. You know that coming in,” senior point guard A.J. Hoggard said after practice on Monday. “You don't want to be the guy that doesn't make it out of the first weekend in the NCAA tournament, you don't want to be the team that doesn't win anything in the Big Ten. You don't want to you don't want to be a part of that history. So you come here with a little bit of pressure, but we look at pressure as a privilege. I've been saying that for a long time.
“So yeah, we definitely know it's urgent and down to the nitty gritty. And we don't want to mess coach's streak up, and we definitely don't want to be on the wrong side of it.”
MSU entered this week No. 22 in the NCAA's NET Rankings, remains highly ranks by most analytic pr and in the field for all 93 bracket experts featured on bracketmatrix.com. However, it is considered the last No. 9 seed when averaging those projections, and Izzo’s team could use at least another win or two between now and the March 17 NCAA selection show.
The Spartans for sure will lose three seniors in Tyson Walker, Malik Hall and Steven Izzo after this season. Three others — Hoggard, Mady Sissoko and Davis Smith — are in their fourth year and have one more year of eligibility available as the class that entered as freshmen during the COVID waiver year in 2020-21. Izzo said those decisions for Hoggard, Sissoko and Smith won't be made until after the seasons.
They all enter Wednesday preparing for it to be their last time playing in front of the Izzone. But should MSU somehow stumble down the stretch and miss the NCAAs for the first time in a quarter-century, they potentially could have another home game none of them want to think about — in the NIT.
How’s that for pressure?
“We've played for championships (on senior night) and we've played a few times to help get us into the tournament,” Izzo said. “There's no question — we know where we're at, we know that wins are important at this time a year. And that's the way we're going to approach it.
“We deal with the white elephant. The elephant shouldn't weigh more, we should just deal with the elephant. … Listen, if we play our best basketball, I think we have a lot of games still left to win.”
Contact Chris Solari:csolari@freepress.com. Follow him@chrissolari.
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Next up: Wildcats
Matchup:Michigan State (17-12, 9-9 Big Ten) vs. Northwestern (20-9, 11-7).
Tipoff:7 p.m. Wednesday; Breslin Center, East Lansing.
TV/radio:Big Ten Network; WJR-AM (760).
