It is very easy to think that any particularly special achievement — enhanced by the adrenaline or excitement you feel in the present moment — is the best ever.
Once in a great while, the euphoria and breathlessness surrounding a given sports moment are not out of step with a genuine analytical appraisal of what just happened.
The 2008 Wimbledon gentlemen’s singles final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer really does hold up as a match worthy of being considered the best of all time. The 2006 Rose Bowl and the 2007 Fiesta Bowl — not yet a decade old — really did seem to be on the very short short list of the greatest college football games ever played, and their reputations have not been eroded by Father Time. The 1992 Duke-Kentucky East Regional final is still regarded by most as the best college basketball game ever played. A more fascinating question is how Saturday’s Notre Dame-Kentucky game will be perceived three, six, or 10 years from now. The discussion of that game is just beginning, and it probably won’t develop until after the Final Four. Should Kentucky win the national title, that game will grow in stature, and rightly so.
The point is clear: Some sporting events actually do manage to pass the “all-time” test in the present moment, but such examples are rare.
As we begin to look at the Final Four in a historical context, then, let’s consider this question: Has Tom Izzo done his very best work this season, compared to his six previous Final Four seasons at Michigan State?
You could very convincingly answer yes, so it’s not as though this is an open-and-shut case. However, a more extensive examination suggests that Izzo’s best job in East Lansing came 10 years ago.
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Izzo is one of the best “second game of a weekend” coaches in the NCAA tournament, meaning that he is extremely hard to beat in the round of 32 (13-1 all-time) and the Elite Eight (7-2). You can do the simple math and realize that Izzo — in pre-Final Four second games — is 20-3. That is absurd. No one prepares better with a short turnaround than he does. The three “second game of a weekend” losses, by the way?
1) Losing a regional final as a 7 seed to top-seeded Texas in San Antonio in 2003.
2) Losing in the round of 32 as a 9 seed to top-seeded North Carolina in Winston-Salem, N.C., another virtual road game.
3) Losing in the regional final last year as a 4 seed to seventh-seeded Connecticut, which played what amounted to a home game before a deafening pro-Husky crowd in Madison Square Garden.
In any Izzo run to the Final Four, you can point to great coaching performances. The man hardly ever fails when he wins that first game on a weekend.
In terms of a full NCAA tournament run, though, which year stands out the most?
A quick survey of Izzo’s seven Final Four seasons should cut the list down to two: 2005 and 2015.
Four times, Michigan State made the Final Four as a top-two seed (three times as a 1 seed, once as a 2 seed in 2009). Three times, the Spartans have reached the Final Four as a 5 seed or lower (twice as a 5, once as a 7, this season). In 2010, Michigan State’s journey to the Final Four as a 5 seed featured a path paved with gold. Ninth-seeded Northern Iowa bumped off top-seeded Kansas, enabling Izzo to face a lower seed in the Sweet 16. In the other half of that year’s Midwest (St. Louis) Regional, sixth-seeded Tennessee defeated second-seeded Ohio State in the Sweet 16, enabling Michigan State to wear home whites yet again in the Elite Eight. Michigan State’s Final Four seed path that March was 12-4-9-6, a fortuitous series of circumstances.
The two best Izzo orchestrations in March are 2005 and 2015. You have been able to absorb this year’s run by Michigan State, so let’s go back to 2005.
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As Tom Izzo and Mike Krzyzewski prepare to meet again in the NCAA tournament, it’s worth noting that they met in 2005, at a point in time when Izzo had never beaten Coach K, going 0-4 against the greatest coach of this generation.
Duke was a No. 1 seed in the Austin Regional (essentially the South — note that Duke has been the No. 1 seed in the South Region in 2005, 2010, and 2015, an amazing bracket fact), a clear favorite against the fifth-seeded Spartans. That year’s Duke team would likely be seen as better than this year’s squad. Shelden Williams in the middle, J.J. Redick as the shooting guard, and Daniel Ewing at the point gave the Blue Devils three highly dynamic offensive players.
Yet, Michigan State was able to keep Duke’s offense under wraps. The Spartans were especially effective in hounding Redick, limiting him to 4-of-14 shooting and only 13 points. Duke finished 7-of-23 from three-point range and committed a whopping 22 turnovers. Michigan State got in Duke’s grill and stayed there. The game wasn’t even a nail-biter in this 5-over-1 upset. Michigan State won by a 78-68 score.
Following a performance that convincing and comprehensive, the Spartans had to come back under 48 hours later and play second-seeded Kentucky, a team with Rajon Rondo in the backcourt and Chuck Hayes in the frontcourt. Not only did Michigan State have to go deep into the well for added energy to begin with; the Spartans were taken to double overtime. As was the case in their regional final against Louisville on Sunday, Michigan State came very close to losing against a team from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The Wildcats had two separate possessions (on one trip down the floor) in the final 1:03 of the first overtime period, but Kelenna Azubuike botched both possessions, one with a terrible hoist and one by failing to get the shot off in time. Michigan State, relieved and revived, outscored Kentucky, 13-7, in the second overtime to make its way to the 2005 Final Four, which was — coincidentally enough — the last time two Big Ten schools made the same Final Four. (Illinois, of course, was the other Final Four team from the Big Ten in 2005.)
It’s true that the 2005 Michigan State team did not play a 4 seed in the round of 32. That’s because No. 13 Vermont upended No. 4 Syracuse in the round of 64. Yet, the ability to beat Duke and Kentucky (both members of this year’s Final Four) when those programs were seeded 1 and 2 makes it awfully difficult to say that the 2015 team did more in the NCAA tournament than the 2005 group did.
Was this year Tom Izzo’s most magical March? It surely means a lot to him — he hasn’t been reluctant to say so — but the verdict here is that 2005 was even better, albeit by a modest margin.
