Izzo expects Spartans to show up

Twelve times Michigan State had been to the NCAA basketball tournament since Jud Heathcote tossed the keys to his protege Tom Izzo, and 12 times Jud had saddled up from his retirement camp in Spokane and ridden off to support the Spartans at their first-rounder.

Hartford, Milwaukee, Cleveland. Memphis and D.C. The short hop to Seattle and the long haul to Tampa. Dayton and Denver. Worcester and Winston-Salem.

Jud made them all, even when he was still on the mend from heart surgery. But he was going to have to miss No. 13 this year because of a personal commitment – he is delivering a eulogy Saturday at the funeral of lifetime friend Jim Slavin – until the bracketeers serendipitously intervened and sent the Spartans to Spokane, and even gave them a Friday tipoff against New Mexico State. So he could hardly contain himself when he rang up Izzo on Sunday.

“Just do me one favor,” he asked. “Could you bring your whole team out here?”

His old boss’ needle drew a laugh but no blood. Izzo saved that for Thursday, when he checked in at the Spokane Arena and opened up a vein.

He has won a national championship and taken the Spartans to four other Final Fours, but this year people think Izzo is coaching Team Dysfunction. He suspended guard Chris Allen for what turned out to be the team’s only game in the Big Ten tournament. Korie Lucious missed a game for an academic issue, and Durrell Summers has found himself on the bench for assorted effort-related shortcomings. Even All-Big Ten guard Kalin Lucas was banished from practice and a start.

“We’re not as smooth as I would like to be,” Izzo admitted, “but we do got to clear up these ‘suspensions’ – that seem to be like eight or 10. There was one suspension and a 5-minute sit out. I can’t call Kalin Lucas missing practice a suspension or Mateen Cleaves would have had 813 suspensions.”

Nonetheless, it is not what you would expect from one of college basketball’s Fortune 500 programs.

Then again, the Fortune 500 has taken some hits. North Carolina and UConn are scuffling in the NIT. UCLA was not fit even for that dreary exercise. Indiana remains in disarray.

But here is Izzo, back in the bracket with his 31-11 NCAA record, his No. 5 seed not a thruway to the Final Four but a good spot for a grinder. If the Spartans are not destiny’s darlings as they were a year ago – when they came up just a game short of the national championship in downtrodden Detroit – they are, well, OK.

Still, the perpetual Izzo pose this season is hand applied to brow, rubbing in exasperation.

The Spartans didn’t lose in January. Come February, it didn’t look as if they’d win. The only ranked team they’ve beaten in the last two months lost its best player to injury, and then there was that one-and-done in the Big Ten tourney.

It has been pointed out how Izzo has a hard time letting go of failures a decade gone, and so it’s likely he will gnaw on this bone – however the season eventually turns out – for a good long time.

“Sometimes each year a team changes its personality,” Izzo said. “I think that if anybody should be blamed maybe it should be me, because I’m the one that tried to force leadership on some people because I knew it’s important. I’ve got to do a better job of figuring out how to get it if it doesn’t just pop up.

“But I think we learned today in some of the games that there’s issues all over. And make sure you understand this – they’re not a lot different than they were when Scott Skiles and those guys were at Michigan State when I first came.”

Winning always hides the warts. Even Heathcote’s NCAA title team – Magic Johnson’s team – of 1979 was on the verge of going sideways. What got resolved then was not so much an issue of leadership but of followership, but the only thing of importance was the resolution.

No one understands that better than Izzo.

“When the year’s over, the biggest thing that I’ll reflect on is that practice Kalin missed and what that did nationally,” Izzo said. “So I’ll get better at that. That wasn’t Kalin’s fault as much as it was mine, and I’ll accept the responsibility. That probably won’t change it, because I did something I thought was right. I’ll just change how I handle it.

“All in all, we’ve got a very good basketball team. One that has a lot of guys that have been to a Final Four and some of our seniors are playing their best ball. I think you’re going to see Lucas play very well. If he does, I like our chances.”

Why not? After all, he brought his whole team.