This year in MSU Basketball has been strange. This was the first year that I can remember in a while where MSU was not ranked stupid high in preseason polls. Draymond Green was a drill sargent in a uniform, rallying the kids with the lunch pail work ethic and every other stupid cliche you can think of. Keith Appling was the budding star and after that it was a laundry list of unknown quantities (Gauna, Byrd), underperformers(Payne, Nix, Thornton), fresh faces(Dawson, Trice, Kearney) and a one year rental in Brandon Wood.
In the pre-season there was serious talk about whether or not MSU would even make the tournament. Whispers questioning if this is the year that Izzo's streak in the Big Dance comes to an end. North Carolina didn't just represent a season opener, it was like getting run into a buzzsaw of college basketball's elite as the christening for most of these newcomers. MSU ended up losing to North Carolina by a respectable 12 points and was right there in a 74-69 loss to Duke.
Then the TRULY unexpected happened. MSU rattled off 15 straight victories. For perspective's sake, 15 straight victories has happened three times in the Izzo era. The other two? In the three straight years of final four appearances.
When I went to run the 15-4 number against years prior, I expected to find that this was a fairly exemplary record for MSU at this point in the season. However, this is VERY common under Izzo, the last team not to have a 15-4 record that wasn't the 2010-2011 failboat was the 2003-2004 Spartans.
So why celebrate such an average start for Michigan State? Well, for starters 15-4 is pretty damn good. Second, of this whole team, the only two players who saw more than 12 minutes per game last year were Appling and Green. Appling is growing into his point guard role nicely and shhh... he's only a sophmore, yet distributes the ball better than Lucas. This tracks him nicely on belonging to a very elite group of point guards by the time he leaves MSU.
When a group of young players expected to finish in the middle of the Big Ten have winning streaks in common with teams of the Izzo Golden Era, that's promising. When MSU Basketball knocks off Wisconsin at the Kohl's Center, I get excited. When MSU basketball has lost to three top 20 teams by an average of six points and beaten two other top 20 teams, they're tracking to do what Tom does best. Make deep runs in the tournament.
Last week, the chatter of MSU winning the whole Big Ten began in earnest on the message boards and people started to expect Golden Era Izzoball from this team. That, among other reasons is why losing to Michigan hurt tonight. No one likes to lose to a rival. More importantly, I think MSU fans are not ready to acknowledge Michigan basketball as a real threat again yet. But Beilein is a good coach and seemingly a decent person, he's gonna be around for a while. However, in the one to two year future, this is MSU stubbing it's toe against a quality opponent on the road in the Big Ten.
This is a year MSU was expected to finish in the middle of the Big Ten pack and they may yet do exactly that, but I don't think so. This team has accomplished several significant somethings that many other Izzo teams never did. The best part, most of these guys are just getting to know each other and it's okay to place more expectation on this team than many did to start the season. They have broad shoulders and they can take it. They're going to stub their toe a few more times this year. But the potential is so much greater than I think most of us imagined prior to this year, just wait, Tom and his boys will deliver, after all it's what an Izzo team does.
In the pre-season there was serious talk about whether or not MSU would even make the tournament. Whispers questioning if this is the year that Izzo's streak in the Big Dance comes to an end. North Carolina didn't just represent a season opener, it was like getting run into a buzzsaw of college basketball's elite as the christening for most of these newcomers. MSU ended up losing to North Carolina by a respectable 12 points and was right there in a 74-69 loss to Duke.
Then the TRULY unexpected happened. MSU rattled off 15 straight victories. For perspective's sake, 15 straight victories has happened three times in the Izzo era. The other two? In the three straight years of final four appearances.
When I went to run the 15-4 number against years prior, I expected to find that this was a fairly exemplary record for MSU at this point in the season. However, this is VERY common under Izzo, the last team not to have a 15-4 record that wasn't the 2010-2011 failboat was the 2003-2004 Spartans.
So why celebrate such an average start for Michigan State? Well, for starters 15-4 is pretty damn good. Second, of this whole team, the only two players who saw more than 12 minutes per game last year were Appling and Green. Appling is growing into his point guard role nicely and shhh... he's only a sophmore, yet distributes the ball better than Lucas. This tracks him nicely on belonging to a very elite group of point guards by the time he leaves MSU.
When a group of young players expected to finish in the middle of the Big Ten have winning streaks in common with teams of the Izzo Golden Era, that's promising. When MSU Basketball knocks off Wisconsin at the Kohl's Center, I get excited. When MSU basketball has lost to three top 20 teams by an average of six points and beaten two other top 20 teams, they're tracking to do what Tom does best. Make deep runs in the tournament.
Last week, the chatter of MSU winning the whole Big Ten began in earnest on the message boards and people started to expect Golden Era Izzoball from this team. That, among other reasons is why losing to Michigan hurt tonight. No one likes to lose to a rival. More importantly, I think MSU fans are not ready to acknowledge Michigan basketball as a real threat again yet. But Beilein is a good coach and seemingly a decent person, he's gonna be around for a while. However, in the one to two year future, this is MSU stubbing it's toe against a quality opponent on the road in the Big Ten.
This is a year MSU was expected to finish in the middle of the Big Ten pack and they may yet do exactly that, but I don't think so. This team has accomplished several significant somethings that many other Izzo teams never did. The best part, most of these guys are just getting to know each other and it's okay to place more expectation on this team than many did to start the season. They have broad shoulders and they can take it. They're going to stub their toe a few more times this year. But the potential is so much greater than I think most of us imagined prior to this year, just wait, Tom and his boys will deliver, after all it's what an Izzo team does.
Great post! Thank you for such a rational look at a team that is still developing and could be real good come March.
ReplyDeleteThanks man. I hate it when people get all sad panda about a pretty reasonable loss. I'm just annoyed we lost to Michigan.
ReplyDelete