Michigan State basketball has chance to make good on promising season with Final Four run

EAST LANSING — Tom Izzo left Minneapolis feeling comfortable that Michigan State basketball did enough to earn an NCAA tournament berth — albeit far from what he and his players hoped to do this season.

And then Saturday arrived. Chaos ensued around the country. Enough so that Izzo’s joy from watching the Spartans’ hockey team win a Big Ten tournament game vanished almost as soon as he left Munn Ice Arena and saw what was happening in the college basketball world.

“Until 10 o’clock last night, I felt pretty good,” Izzo said Sunday evening. “And then when that stuff came across the air for the first time that we were a bubble team, to be honest you, I was shocked.

“I haven't slept since. It was one of the most anxious days of my career.”

As it turned out, all of the alleged experts in bracketology who put the Spartans on the bubble were pretty far off. The NCAA selection committee members in the room, who make the actual decisions, had no doubt that MSU (19-14) deserved a 26th consecutive berth — not as one of the last teams in the field of 68 or even adjacent to the cut line.

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Even if Izzo and his players still don’t like how close it felt.

“I believe in my guys,” fifth-year senior Malik Hall said. “I believe in the games that we went through this year, some of the teams that we played. We didn't get in the way that we liked, for sure. But I believed that we were getting in.”

After a big exhale and some recalibration, the Spartans are back where they’ve always wanted to be at this point of the season: Playing for a national title.

The path, however, is far from the one they envisioned. Michigan State will be the No. 9 seed in the West Region and opens the NCAA tournament first round Thursday against No. 8 seed Mississippi State (21-13). Tipoff is 12:15 p.m. at Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, on CBS.

“I'm just happy we're in,” Hall said. “For me, it was really like, once you're in, it doesn't matter where you're at. I think that's been proven enough times over for everyone. As long as we're in it, the rest of it doesn't really matter to me.”

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According to the full 68-team seed list revealed by ESPN’s Jeff Borzello, the Spartans came in 33rd and the top No. 9 seed, one spot behind the 32nd-place Bulldogs as the final No. 8 seed.

Charles McClelland, the NCAA selection committee chairman and Southwest Athletic Conference commissioner, Izzo’s team playing a difficult schedule and getting favorable results outweighed the Spartans’ 14 losses, pointing to wins over Baylor, Indiana State and Butler.

Michigan State finished No. 24 in the NCAA's NET Rankings and was 14th in strength of schedule, according to McClelland. They went 3-9 against Quad 1 opponents, 6-5 against Quad 2 foes and were 10-0 against Quads 3 and 4.

“Their resume was impressive,” McClelland said on a teleconference. “When you start to look at it, they had 14 losses. ... We just felt that, given where we are in college basketball with the parity, the fact that Michigan State went out and played those games and won those games, had a significant nonconference strength of schedule, it gave them the nod on that seed line.”

It resulted in the 26th straight March Madness berth for Izzo, a Division I record, in his 29th season as the Spartans’ head coach. He missed the 1996 and 1997 tournaments, and the 2020 event was canceled due to the pandemic.

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Izzo’s team this year closed the regular season by dropping four of five games, then split its two games at the Big Ten tournament in Minneapolis. The Spartans defeated Minnesota on Thursday, 77-67, then fell to No. 3 Purdue in Friday’s quarterfinals, 67-62.

“Could we have done more? 100%,” Izzo said. “I don't look at this as an overachieving year, I don't look at it as a total underachieving year. But it has not been the year that I was hoping it would be. And yet, we're three or four wins – and I mean very winnable wins – and then all of a sudden, you look at these brackets, and you could be a 5- or 6-seed. That's how tough it is right now. We lost so many games by a small number of points.

“But guess what? The uncertainty is over.”

It is the Spartans’ 37th all-time NCAA appearance, with a 72-35 overall record including two national championships and 10 Final Four berths. Their .673 winning percentage is eight-best in Division I history. Michigan State last season reached the Sweet 16 for the 15th time under Izzo, who is 55-24 (.696) in his 25 previous NCAA appearances.

After going to the Final Four in 2019 and appearing prepared to make a run in 2020 when the NCAA tournament was canceled due to the pandemic, the Spartans have been teetering toward the back of the seed line more frequently since.

Izzo’s team got one of the last bids in 2021 and played in the First Four for the first time ever, losing in overtime to UCLA; those Bruins would advance to the Final Four. The Spartans were a No. 7 seed in the past two NCAA brackets, losing in the second round to Duke in 2022 and advancing to the Sweet 16 last year before falling in overtime to Kansas State, 98-93.

That run last March set up massive expectations for this year. Instead, a season that began with national championship ambitions immediately turned into a wild winter, as the inconsistent Spartans failed to approach those lofty ambitions of winning a Big Ten title.

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But they did enough to extend Izzo’s streak and give themselves a chance to at least give chase for their ultimate goal coming into the season.

“We still have the possibility of being national champions in my eyes,” Hall said. “If we're all clicking and we're all on the same page, if we're doing what we're supposed to be defensively and offensively – like, (expletive), I think everybody's scared in my eyes.”

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State's March Madness is booked. Can they reach Final Four?