Tom Izzo’s Success During Tournament Time Should Remind Everyone that they are No Underdog: Especially the Waiting Oklahoma Sooners!

Tom Izzo’s Success During Tournament Time Should Remind Everyone that they are No Underdog: Especially Waiting Oklahoma! Tom Izzo’s is a legend in the

Tom Izzo’s Success During Tournament Time Should Remind Everyone that they are No Underdog: Especially Waiting Oklahoma!

Tom Izzo’s is a legend in the coaching world in the month of March. His colleagues love to watch him, hate to play him. For the Oklahoma Sooners they drew the short straw this week and are the next hurdle in the Master of March’s pursuit of a seventh Final Four and second national title. Not an enviable position.

Izzo let us in on his mindset, “As far as everything goes, I think, again, this weekend we're trying to go to win the thing. That's what I got to do. There's a lot of different teams there. Of course, we're focusing a lot of our stuff on Oklahoma. But we just kind of had a big meeting now to go over all three teams and try to get a little perspective on each one of them.”

He addressed the Syracuse NCAA regional and he thinks its wide open, “It is a wide open regional. I'm not sure there's any real favorite going in. Some people have certain teams favored, but I think everybody's pretty even as far as what we're doing.”

So is the usually pessimistic head man happy about anything right now? “Our defensive effort in the NCAA tournament has been unbelievable. But I think on both ends, meaning the three point field goal percentage, and the regular one, I think we're second only to Kentucky now in that area. The other thing that's been unbelievable is our turnovers, 7.5 over these games, 6 turnovers against Virginia, a very good defensive team. That's been great.”

With 13 of the last 18 years the Spartans making the Sweet 16, seven of the last eight and of course the last four getting this far is Izzo content? No, but he is appreciative. “As far as a number of our trips to a Sweet 16 that everybody is asking me about, I'm just thrilled that I'm a part of the ride”

No one knows his team as well as Izzo and he talked about peaking at the right time. “We are playing some of our best basketball. Everybody's asked me on radio or TV, When did it really change? I wrote down some things in my mind, it was about the Northwestern game over there, we had just got beaten by Illinois at home. We did change the lineup a little bit. I don't think that had everything to do with it because the lineup was changed for a variety of reasons. But we have won 10 out of the last 13. That crazy loss to Minnesota at home, then the two to Wisconsin. Only three of those 13 were at home actually. A couple neutral sites. But nine of those games were against NCAA teams.”

So if Izzo is usually so pessimistic, why is he talking so glowingly about this squad? He explained, “I downplay where we are sometimes because this team is a little different. I've up played it some. After that devastating loss to Illinois, and to me it was devastating the way we lost that game at the free throw line, we have made some big jumps.”

The Spartans aren’t peaking because of any one player, they are peaking as a team and that is what makes them dangerous. Izzo points to one moment the momentum began to turn, “Travis Trice, rather than sulking because we didn't start him, like I said, that wasn't all because of Travis. Some was take some pressure, some was get a rest, some was get a better scorer off the bench. He's averaged almost 18 per game since. He's been shooting nearly 70% from the three. In those 13 games as a team we've only averaged nine and a half turnovers which would be a low, low for our team. It's not like we've just come on in the NCAA tournament. We have been steady in the last month.”

Of course everyone is aware of the Spartan woes from the charity stripe. Those have cost the Spartans as many as five games this year, but as the Spartans have improved there is NO DOUBT it is directly related to their progress from the line.

“What would be the biggest thing is we bumped our free throw percentage up in the last 13 games to almost 65. That sounds ridiculous, but I told you earlier if we shot 60% from the line, we would have won four more games, maybe 55% from the line. So I think everything I said was pretty much on track. I know that's not a big goal, to shoot 65, but it's changed some games that we won that we were losing earlier. If we can start upping that now a little bit more, that would be of great benefit.”

So with Izzo sounding more like a motivational speaker than his usual glass half empty outlook does anything worry him? Does anything keep him up or concern him? “What am I worried about in the tournament? The two negatives have been our foul trouble. Denzel, Branden, can't have those key guys in it. Probably the biggest negative of all for me, I think I have a reason for it, we're only like a plus one or two in the last 13 games rebounding the ball. Been out rebounded in the NCAA tournament, including killed on the offensive glass by teams. That has to be fixed.”

There is more. “When you have Dawson on the bench for half the game against Georgia, when you have Valentine on the bench for a lot of the time, those are two pretty good rebounders. Schilling played four minutes against Georgia. Costello has been a little slowed by just a knee that's been on and on and on. It's nothing serious, but a little tendinitis in it. It's caused him some problems.”

And finally from the what is worrying Izzo department, “I'd say the negative is we haven't rebounded well. But how can you say if you have Bren, Trav, and Tum out there because 'Zel is in foul trouble, Branden is in foul trouble. I think if we stay out of foul trouble, it will help our rebounding. That's going to be a point of emphasis tonight, tomorrow and the next day, along with trying to do a better job, again. It's not aggressive fouling, it's a bad turnovers, then a frustration fouling.”

Izzo loves pressure. He loves expectations and while some people wrote his team off earlier in the year, the Spartans are now favored by Vegas to make the Final Four. Does he really see them as the rising underdog? Of course not.

I asked him about the perception of underdog to favorite. “I just can't believe in this program that anyone would look at us as underdogs. One year you can be, but these guys have been through the others. We're not underdogs. We're not that much better than anybody. I think they have to be able to accept that.

I did tell them, get my commercial in, I did tell them the minute we walked into the locker room, I said, Take your phones, stick 'em where the sun doesn't shine, and stay off Twitter. A couple guys had tweeted some dumb things after the tournament. Not from the team. You probably know. That wasn't what I meant. I meant, Don't read the stuff. All the people that adore you now that had you in the NIT... I mean, I understood the whole deal.”

Izzo is frustrated that people think the team has undergone a complete metamorphosis. It hasn’t. “But remember this: this team hasn't changed as much as everybody's making it out to. We had a lot of losses that we played our tail off, shot 48, 52, 53 from the free throw line. It's not just us that would lose those games, those kind of games, there's a lot of teams that would. So the actual play was pretty good.

Defensively, I kept coming into these press conferences saying stat wise we've been pretty awesome. But the one stat that killed us killed us in a couple games.”

Izzo went right back the people who slighted his program with the underdog moniker. “I didn't look at us as underdogged. Did I question whether we would get in the tournament? Hell, yeah, I did. Did I question what we'd be? Yes, I questioned it.”

So what did Izzo tell his team to turn the switch on? “The one thing I came back with from the Big Ten tournament, and I told them, We can let everybody outside laugh at us, rightfully so, you shouldn't shoot 50, 60, 40 from the free throw line. I was right with them, our fans. I understood it.”

He just wants people to look back with 20/20 vision and realize MSU wasn’t as bad as some thought. “We have played everybody right to the T. Everybody acted lining losing to Illinois or losing to Nebraska, Nebraska was playing better then. That was a day to remember then because of their assistant coach's son. It was an incredible atmosphere. Maryland here. I mean, bad loss at the time turned into not as bad a loss.

I don't think the team has changed as much as you think. We found a way to win not doing as well from the free throw line. I think we've made some adjustments in our lineup that is giving us more off the bench, with Tum in there defensively.”

As far as they have come this year, Izzo doesn’t want expectations minimized. Look out Oklahoma because Izzo thinks this team is close. Real close to doing something special. “We're not that far off. So underdogged, not underdogged, I mean, we still deserve to be an underdog. We haven't won those games, whatever my great excuses are. Free throws are part of the game. But at least I know we can play with those teams, yet we got to finish the job. That's what I think our guys understand. A little humble pie early in the year is not good for you, but maybe for this team it served them well.”

An optimistic Izzo is not a normal thing to see. That should scare the other 15 teams left, but make the others sit back and enjoy. Spartan Nation this team is overachieving and the ride isn’t over.