Future Michigan State basketball schedules likely to include more 'prep days'

East Lansing, Mich. – The demanding nature of Michigan State’s early-season schedule has become apparent over the team’s past two games. The Spartans have only had one break longer than four days between games this season, which has resulted in insufficient practice and rest time for a fatigued, well-traveled team.

The lack of prep days, or “the days in between,” as Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo called them at his Monday press conference, is something he takes responsibility for.

“It’s so hard in this job because you don’t want to make excuses, but nobody’s played a schedule like this, with the travel and the injuries,” Izzo said. “I said I made it. The mistake I made was the days in between, and the way it got all crunched in, it’s been a little more difficult on the players. So the players shouldn’t take blame for that, the coach should. And I will.

“Yes, they’re tired. Yes, they’re not performing at the rate they should, or could, or had been. But I’ll take the blame for that and we’ll get better.”

Izzo is known for scheduling tough. That likely won’t change. But next season, and in years to come, things might be slightly different, with the team now having been through a schedule with limited breaks in action and feeling the effects. 

“I’ve already talked to KP [Associate Athletic Director Kevin Pauga] about it, and we were dealt those weird cards,” Izzo said. “It was the one year we had the ACC Challenge and the Big East Gavitt Games and the aircraft and the two trips to California.

“Part of it is playing the Big Ten games early, part of it is everybody wants to play in these events – meaning the three-game events – which we’re going to re-look at that, too. You know, not having control of our schedule.

“When you try to make a schedule up – and it sounds like a big excuse but really I don’t give a darn, I’m just telling you the truth – when you try to make one up and you have three days scheduled for the Big Ten-ACC Challenge, you have to leave open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Well if you play on Monday, then you could’ve scheduled some other games later on. If you play on Wednesday – and you really don’t know – then you can’t schedule games earlier, so then you end up with games in between. You do that with the Gavitt Games and you just have all these problems. That’s why I love football. I mean, if you go crazy – absolute insanity – you might play Friday night instead of Saturday. But you know what your weeks look like, and ours, this time, were really tough, compounded with the travel, compounded with the injuries.”

For now, Izzo’s team will have to grind through another Big Ten test, this time on the road against 6-2 Penn State on Wednesday. After that, the Spartans (5-4) will play four games from Dec. 10 to Jan. 3, against Brown, Oakland, Buffalo and Nebraska. 

“In Penn State, the schedule doesn’t get any easier,” Izzo said. “It’ll be the third team in a row that has had five or six days to prepare for us, where we haven’t.

“We have to play our butt off against a very good team who’s playing well, and then we get a little more human. You know, we have a game here, although then we have finals. But it gets a little more human.”

Despite the challenging schedule, Izzo is not concerned about the adverse effects of this November stretch. 

“I’m not worried about a team reeling,” Izzo said. “If anything else, I think this solidifies if you are struggling a little bit, all the little things you have to do even better. So I think it does the opposite. I think it makes you re-focus in on all the little things that are important, both as a coaching staff and as players, and we all have to get together on that. But you know, we’ve played in enough big games, we’ve played well enough in big games, we’ve won some big games, I think we know where this team could be. I also think we saw what happened if we don’t play at a level that we need to play at.”