Tom Izzo shares key to strong March showings for Michigan State

Michigan State just has a way of getting to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Once again, the Spartans have booked a trip to the Sweet Sixteen thanks to an upset of Marquette in the second round. Like some of the other MSU teams that have had postseason success under Tom Izzo, this group has been up and down all year but are playing well at the perfect time.

Now, they’ll head to New York City and Madison Garden to continue their run against Kansas State.

After the game, Coach Izzo was asked if it was the win-or-go-home aspect of the NCAA Tournament that seems to make his less consistent teams bring out their best play in March Madness, to which Izzo responded:

“I’d like to say I hope not because that means I’m not doing my job all the time. My job is to get them ready each and every game. But I do think that we talk a lot about tournaments. We talk a lot about the Thanksgiving tournament or the Big Ten, or the Big Ten Tournament. Anytime you get a chance to win games where if you lose, you go home, I think you’ve got to — or lose and you’re not going to finish first — I think we do talk about that a lot at our place.

“And it doesn’t always hit home. But sooner or later — I thought yesterday we guarded a lot better. We had one bad stretch. Other than that, I thought we did an unbelievable job against a very good offensive team.”

After that answer, Izzo went on to discuss what else went into getting the win over the Golden Eagles on Sunday, keeping the March run alive:

“So we guarded better and we maintained some things. And we gave up the lead. Came back at the end. We couldn’t make a free throw. We’ve got I think the best free-throw shooting team in the league. There wasn’t panic. I think we’re growing.

“To be honest, I thought A.J. played really well. And even on the bench, because he had to sit a while with the fouls. When you’ve got a team that’s fun to coach and it’s fun to coach when you can coach ’em.

“And so I’ve said this. I mean, some of it’s my fault that I feel like all the things that are going on in the world, that you don’t — at the end of the day, as I said earlier this week and I’ll say it a hundred times, you can do all the different things you can do. You can talk about kids that have changed. You can talk about you can do things different ways — I just think you’ve still got to hold people accountable and gotta find the right way to do it.

“And right now I’ve got a lot more eyes looking at me than raising them. And that’s a good sign. So we’ll keep playing well.”

Just keep playing well, says Tom Izzo. Michigan State certainly got the job done on both ends of the court against Marquette and will now face a Kansas State team that has two All-Americans.