Yet Again Tom Izzo’s March Magic Has Spartans Peaking at the Right Time and the Nation Asking How?

Yet Again Tom Izzo’s March Magic Has Spartans Peaking at the Right Time and the Nation Asking How? Time Life Warner Arena Charlotte, NC If you haven’t

Yet Again Tom Izzo’s March Magic Has Spartans Peaking at the Right Time and the Nation Asking How?

Time Life Warner Arena

Charlotte, NC

If you haven’t been under a rock for the last 18 years, you already know that Tom Izzo has one goal in his career, “To hang banners.” Izzo told me years ago when I discussed with him that if he scheduled like other well-known coaches and avoided the play anyone anywhere mantra he could easily have more career wins, (Cough cough Jim Boeheim) “I don’t care about wins. That is something you can debate. Who did you play? Who didn’t you play? I only care about one thing and that is hanging banners.” I agree with him.

After the Spartans 70-63 win last night here in Charlotte, once again Izzo has his team peaking at the right time and once again the nation is asking how he does it? Travis Trice was asked, but the simplicity of his answer baffled some. “I think there's a lot of factors into this. Our coaches do a great job of developing us from freshmen to senior year, they're pretty good about spotting guys they feel they can help improve, but really it's your teammates honestly, when you're going against a Denzel Valentine every day and a Brenden Dawson every day, you have no choice but to get better. That's -- I owe it to my teammates.”

Branden Dawson’s answer was equally as simple and for people who don’t follow this team every day, equally as frustrating. He said, “I would say it's just our focus. Coming into this game, we wanted to be different. We've been watching all the rest of the games and we saw that good teams, the Baylor and Iowa States, those guys just came out and I think they were too focused on just the seeding. Tonight Coach mentioned to us let's be different. So we just wanted to play better, we just wanted to come out and play hard and I think around this time is just our focus and we were just dialed in.”

Junior guard Anthony Gill, the Cavalier junior forward understands the Spartans are peaking. They sent the Cavs home last year after a match in the Sweet 16 and he fully grasps what facing the Spartans in March means. “I think that it's going to be good for us. Last year they beat us in the Sweet 16 and I remember in the locker room everybody just said remember how this feels. I think this isn't going to be a revenge game, just us going out there and do what we do. I think everybody's hungry to go to the next round and wants to keep moving on so I think we're ready for the challenge and we're going to go out there and do it.”

Virginia junior guard Malcolm Brogdon echoed his teammates sentiment about playing the Spartans at 12:10 PM on Sunday. “it's not about revenge, it's about going out there and establishing ourselves and making it to the next game. The hungrier team is going to win on Sunday so we're going to come out and try to be hungry.”

Even the well-respected head coach of Virginia Tony Bennett had high praise for Izzo’s magic. Simply saying, “I just know that Coach Izzo has a knack for getting his teams to really rise up and play at a high level come March. He's just done it, you look at his track record, but watching because I know how good Wisconsin, just from my interest being from there and all that, I watched them a few times, and I know how well Wisconsin was playing, so when I watched that Big Ten final, that was impressive. I think they beat Maryland to get into that game in a tough, hard-fought game and how well Maryland's playing. They have a knack, they've got guys with experience. I remember how good Dawson was against us last year in the Sweet 16 game. He's got them playing at a high level, without a doubt. But watched them just bits and pieces.”

The Spartans are getting a lot of love nationally and they should. Their past players and the coaching excellence of Tom Izzo has earned it. But this team hasn’t. For that reason alone Izzo tempers his enthusiasm.

Does he think his team has followed the road map of his other teams? Have they peaked? Are the 2014-2015 Spartans hitting the pinnacle of their potential right now?

“I think it's the highest it's been this year, but I think it's pretty easy to see we're not a typical Michigan State team. We don't have maybe as much talent as we had. We do have -- I appreciated Branden, but we've had chemistry all year. We tell our guys you have to play hard enough, good enough and smart enough. For the most part, we play hard. A lot of times we play good. Now, the third one, that's got to fall on me because we're just not playing as smart as we need to play in certain situations, and it's cost us, between that and some free throws, it's cost us during the year. But we have played well enough to be in a lot of games and I do think that it was fun to listen to the players say, okay, remember what we learned in Wisconsin at halftime in the huddles they said it. That's encouraging because that means they're not treating the history like it's just that is the way it is, you treat it that you can't change it but you learn from it. I think we had enough guys that played well to win, we had enough guys that played poorly to keep my job and coach, and now in the next two days we have to figure out what we did right and wrong and somehow to stop one of these two teams we could play. I think this team has had good chemistry, maybe as good as we've had in a long, long time, they get along well, they hang together, they do everything together, we don't have the super star syndrome and it's been fun to watch them grow together. Sometimes, I've got to tell you, it's an out of body experience once in a while the things we do for no reason. Clock's on our side, we talk about it and we've made a few mistakes. I guess somewhere seriously I've got to take onus on that because it's my job to make sure they know what they're doing at certain times. We'll try to get better with that in the next two days.”

At 12:10 PM on Sunday, what should be the best game of the tournament on that day, the Spartans and the Cavaliers face off. It will be physical. It will be brutal and it will be fun. Virginia had the love all year. MSU didn’t, but the Spartans are getting the love when it matters and that is March. Throw the seeds out. It doesn’t matter that MSU is a seven and Virginia is a two. This is a heavyweight fight.