Despite First-Round Loss, Izzo Appreciates Special Team
3/19/2016 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
By Steve Grinczel, MSUSpartans.com Online Columnist | @GrinzOnGreen
ST. LOUIS â€" The swift current of sports is as cold as it is relentless. For all intents and purposes, you're only as good as your last game. A lifetime of blood, sweat and tears, hopes and dreams, sacrifice and hardship is summarized for all time in a stark line noting date, opponent, location and score on a page in a record book.
A final win may be talked about for decades and the players immortalized. A season-ending loss, at best, is mercifully forgotten; at worst, rendered as an unforgettable failure, without regard to context.
Michigan State's monumental 90-81 upset defeat against Middle Tennessee in the first round of the NCAA Tournament likely isn't one that will be easily dismissed, quietly or mercifully, for quite a long time, not that the Spartans won't accept responsibility for the aftermath they are doomed to face.
Talk of getting back to the Final Four began within minutes of losing to Duke in last year's national semifinal in Indianapolis.
Even head coach Tom Izzo tipped off the season by saying seven Final Fours were great and all, but this team had everything it needed to reach Houston -- including the nation's most versatile player in guard Denzel Valentine -- and wasn't the least bit shy about saying so.
Of course, the higher the claim the further there is to fall, as a devastated group of Spartans, especially seniors Valentine, Matt Costello, Bryn Forbes and Colby Wollenman, who put every fiber of their being on the line in the name of winning a National Championship, showed after becoming just the eighth No. 2 seed to lose to a No. 15 in tournament history.
"I can't believe what's going on," Costello said in the Scottrade Center locker room afterward. "I was just talking to Bryn and Zel on the way back here and it feels like we're in a dream right now.
"It isn't real."
Said Izzo, "It's a dream and it's a nightmare. That's what is cool and cruel about this tournament: One-and-done is a special thing and you don't get to have bad days."
Judging by size of the lump in his throat, the loss was the toughest for Izzo to swallow in his 21 seasons as the Spartans' head coach. The dejection ranked behind only the third-seeded Spartans' first-round stumble against No. 14 Weber State in 1995, he said from a career standpoint, and that was because it was his predecessor Jud Heathcote's final game.
That team also entered the tournament full of promise with the dynamic "Fire and Ice" duo of Shawn Respert and Eric Snow manning the backcourt. Snow was inconsolable for the longest time after the inexplicable 73-72 defeat, and this time, Costello's eyes were just as red and swollen.
In the wake of the snarky putdowns and armchair critiques that have filled the Twitterverse since the final buzzer, Izzo was not about to let this team be relegated to an ignominious line of agate type in the media guide, or remembered only for what it didn't achieve.
"That's the problem," he said at the formal postgame press conference with Valentine, Costello and Forbes. "You know it's always what's next? There's three guys here that gave me every single thing they had, and I don't care about next year. I don't even care about tomorrow right now.
"I just care about the present and what they did for me, for us, and somehow I've got to make sure that in all this disappointment that does not get lost, because that's the problem with sports -- it does get lost.
This group of players was a godsend for Izzo, who admitted the off-the-court issues of some of his recent teams took a toll on his enthusiasm. If last year's overachieving Spartan squad restored his faith in the college basketball ideal, this one invigorated him.
Collectively, it made the grade academically, competed fiercely athletically, oozed leadership, reveled in its camaraderie, comported itself with good humor and was so socially correct he could rest easy at night.
"I guess the proudest you could say is if my son could be like them, I'd be a happy guy," Izzo said. "It's just not in my nature to feel good about everything, but they left a big foot footprint so many different ways: The work ethic, the attention to detail, the classroom, the hospital visits.
"They gave me everything they had. They gave me the ability to sleep with two eyes shut again -- that disappeared for a few years. When I get through today, I'll be able to tell them how I really feel about them. But I'm like them. It's just a tough day."
Basketball-wise, of course, no one in Green and White was pleased.
Middle Tennessee had to play a near-perfect game to win, and it did, with healthy dose of good fortune thrown in. It's 3-point shooters, who were dangerously effective from all five positions this season in Conference USA with league-leading 38.6-percent accuracy from all five positions, blew up the charts with 57.9-percent efficiency (11 for 19) against the Spartans.
Amazingly, Michigan State, which trailed by as many as 13 points in the first half, still had a chance to pull out the victory despite playing its poorest defensive game of the season and committing a plethora of momentum-sapping turnovers.
Valentine is the reigning Big Ten Player of the Year, an All-American and a legacy Spartan whose father, Carlton, preceded him in a Michigan State uniform. His appreciation for MSU's heritage and his unequivocal zeal to deliver championships linked him to the likes of Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Draymond Green.
Valentine's inability to fulfill a promise he made first and foremost to himself left him numb, but he owned the ache in his heart just as assuredly as he would have basked in the euphoria of winning a title.
"I can't measure (the pain) right now because I'm just so disappointed with the way I played," Valentine said. "My teammates did a great job, but as a man who is supposedly the best player on the team, you have to come through when the team needs you and I didn't. Travis Trice last year, every game in the tournament, he was our best player and he gave us hope in every game with the crazy shots he made, and I didn't do that.
"It's kind of embarrassing but as man you go through adversity and you have to withstand it and keep living, but you've got to learn from the mistakes."
Izzo doesn't regret for an instant saddling this team with the high expectations of being the last of 68 teams standing against a risk factor that's skewed by the treacherous one-and-done nature of the tournament.
"I put myself out there that this team had a chance to win a National Championship," Izzo said. "I don't feel one bit different. Yeah, you're supposed to coach every team and every game the same way, but let's face it. There are some guys and some teams that just do more for you.
"I can look everybody in the eye and say I'll probably never have another team like this. I'll probably never have guys like this (again). We'll shoot for it, but this is a special group and that's why there's all the emotion, and that's why it's a tough time.
"They resurrected me and for whatever length I coach and whatever number of years it's going to be, I'll owe them that."
The loss was so personal for Izzo, it took him back to the end of December when his beloved father, Carl, died just before the start of the Big Ten season.
"When I lost my dad people told me, don't think about the sorrow of losing him, think about the memories of having him," said Izzo, his voice wavering. "And I kind of tried to do that with my team as dumb as that sounds.
"I'm not going to be blessed with guys that had so many different reasons to be great here. I'm going to try to think of all the things they did for me and appreciate who they are and what they are, and then take a couple days off, just sit back and enjoy them. And then I'll worry about where the future is."
