Basketball isn't totally my thing. I love watching our team and I've always said that if Izzo shot someone at midcourt during a basketball game he wouldn't get in trouble until he did it the second time. Some of my fondest MSU memories are of attending MSU hoops games. I knew I was on the right track with my wife when she started talking about playing inside/outside ball and preaching why Izzo should play zone instead of man.
However, as I started out saying, I'm happy to watch basketball passively instead of critically and it's for that reason I'm starting out with the disclaimer right now. If you want cogent or frequent basketball analysis this isn't going to be the place for it. If that's what you want and you're not already reading The Only Colors you should be. They do work. That said, on with the show.
Here comes the rain, the cold, the yuck. Where football season and tailgating starts to get a bit raw, where you come home from every game and changing back into just a shirt after wearing seven clothes makes you feel like you lost 20 lbs in seconds. As I sit and write, it's pouring cats and dogs outside and there's 25 mph winds. This is normally the time of year I pick up a Sports Illustrated and see MSU B-ball is ranked in the top 5.
This year though, Izzo enters the season ranked 28th in the Coaches Poll which isn't even really ranked. He suffered the loss of Delvon Roe several weeks ago, Korie Lucious & Garrick Sherman last season, Chris Allen the offseason before that. We graduated Kalin Lucas, Durrell Summers and Mike Kebler. We've lost six players since last year that contributed significant minutes to our 2010 MSU basketball team.
This might be the best thing to revitalize MSU basketball in a long time. What's Izzo ranked today? He isn't. He opens against #1 UNC and follows that up that by playing #6 Duke. So even if he opens 0-2 then he's still not ranked, he mulligans and he starts over. Can't lose there, you're playing with house money. He's going to be rotating in freshmen this year and lots of them. He has young players in Payne, Appling and Nix who have experience playing, but are far from savvy veterans.
He basically gets to blow up the team and start over with young, inexperienced and most importantly talented players that are malleable. A coaches dream for winning championships in the future. Who's gonna help old Tom whip this whippersnappers into shape? Draymond Green.
I've called Draymond Green in the past the Drew Stanton of Michigan State Basketball. He can do it all and sometimes does things a person would never think to do usually good, occasionally bad. He is tough, he works hard, he's a good kid and he can flat out ball. He manages to be a shining star of the team while still putting the team first. He's exactly what you want to teach all of the young pups to be and this is his team.
This is the first year in quite sometime Izzo has been freed of top 10 expectations by writers who forget that Izzo is brilliant in March and is still learning his guys in November. Izzo is free to experiment, to build, to have more teaching moments than usual. This is a year where if MSU basketball finishes in the top 3 of the Big 10 it's a joy, not an expectation. With reasonable expectations, this could be a great year for MSU basketball.
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