March Madness doesn’t get stamped as official until the familiar face of Tom Izzo takes on a tormented look, which came Friday with 8:29 left in the first half against Southern California. The Michigan State coach, at 68, has a book of great NCAA moments.
, including a broken whiteboard and a joke about once maybe having broken one over Draymond Green, all of which meant Izzo, 68, is back for a record 25th consecutive time, dispensing wisdom while epitomizing how coaches tilt toward control freakishness and danger addiction.“Hell, yes, it does [get addictive],” he said of the danger of ouster. “I mean, you saw a team last night that led the whole game. And good players. And good kids.
So he told of his late timeout of control-freakishness amid danger addiction — check the timeouts left, check the arrow — and said: “So I felt today that everybody — coaches, players — were all in it together. And is it because we fear? I hope so. I fear my job every day. That’s what makes me work. Fear of being in the NCAA tournament and losing? That’s okay. You can’t be nervous at this time, what these guys have been through. If fear makes you nervous, probably not going to win anyway.
It’s so rich in travel that Izzo’s teams have opened these tournaments in Hartford , Milwaukee, Cleveland, Memphis, Washington, Tampa, Seattle, Worcester , Dayton , Winston-Salem , Denver, Minneapolis, Spokane, Tampa again, Columbus, Auburn Hills , Spokane again, Charlotte, St. Louis, Tulsa, Detroit, Des Moines, West Lafayette , Greenville and Columbus again.Izzo knows more than enough to prefer Friday to Thursday.
“For the most part, I’ve always wanted to play on the Friday,” he said. “I didn’t care where. I just wanted to play on the Friday. It wasn’t for an extra day of prep.” It was for spotting the upsets and then showing them to the players and saying, he said, “See guys, I told you.
And then Michigan State gathered a 66-51 lead with 4:21 left off some great defensive energy with Hall’s gorgeous baby hook in the mix, and Izzo called that hook “pretty” as it was, but then came a sequence of the kind of thing so dangerous that no coach can resist trying to avoid it.With 1:46 left, A.J. Hoggard front-rimmed the front end of a one-and-one.With 1:13 left, Mady Sissoko had a front end rattle out.
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