DotComp: An outright championship should feel better than this, but Tom Izzo won't let it

Clinching an outright Big Ten Championship - and doing it on the road - should be a happier, more satisfying occasion than this one seemed for Michigan State and Tom Izzo. Izzo went back and forth from dissatisfied, to kind of happy, to dissatisfied, to finally snarling out the proper words (although he didn’t seem to feel them), in the wake of Thursday’s crazy 91-84, come-from-behind victory at Iowa. He’s a champion. Now all these players are champions, too. And he’s challenging them to follow his lead on how to handle it. When this is your eleventh time, and you’ve gone to eight Final Fours, and another one of your teams is suddenly becoming a contender for a ninth, well, a Hall of Famer like Izzo has trouble breaking out of cranky, demanding coach mode and smiling about a championship this early in Izzo’s favorite month.  Smile? Celebrate? Maybe a little bit of an obligatory fist pump. But Michigan State played just shoddily enough on this night to keep Izzo’s coaching cap tightened to a March level of madness.