After a rocky start to the season, Michigan State basketball has blossomed into the best team in the Big Ten. On Thursday night, Tom Izzo and the Spartans clinched the outright regular season conference title with a win over Iowa and some help from a slumping Michigan team.
Winning the Big Ten isn’t the only stunning achievement that Izzo has pulled off this season. He also passed legendary Indiana head coach Bob Knight for the most wins in the history of the conference earlier this year.
Before Michigan State’s regular season finale, Izzo downplayed the massive achievement, via Matt Norlander of CBS Sports.
“Doesn’t mean as much to me as you think, maybe someday it will,” Izzo said.
Izzo has been one of the best coaches in college basketball for a long time and has been getting the job done at Michigan State since 1995 as the head coach. He isn’t ready to hang it up, but he knows that he needs to do the job the same way in year 30 as he did in year one.
“If I don’t want to come into work early and don’t want to work late,” Izzo stated, per Norlander. “I will never cheat this place, and I will never cheat a player that I coach. Never. I mean NEVER. That is f***ing etched in stone. So if I don’t want to come back for a meeting with a player, if I don’t want to give him the time, I’m going to be walking out that door that day.”
Featuring Jase Richardson has unlocked Michigan State
Michigan State separated itself from a very crowded pack in the Big Ten this season, and the emergence of freshman star Jase Richardson has been a big reason for that.
Richardson was clearly a great talent from the moment he stepped on the floor for the Spartans, but Michigan State is featuring him more in the offense during conference play than they did at the beginning of the season. Richardson has reached 10 field goal attempts six times in the last eight games after failing to reach that number even once in the first 21 games of the season.
Michigan State is 5-1 in those six games where Richardson is featured as a primary scorer, including very impressive wins over Michigan, Maryland, Oregon and Illinois. The lefty swingman has shown that he can fill it up from all three levels and also has some nice playmaking chops when he gets in the lane.
Richardson is the son of longtime NBA veteran Jason Richardson, so it doesn’t come as a surprise that he has picked things up so quickly at the college level. The projected lottery pick is a massive reason why the Spartans are viewed as a title contender this March.
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