The Spartan Nation Basketball Weekly

Tried, Tested, & Tough The 2010 Spartans are yet another battle tested Tom Izzo team readying to play for championships. If you look around, it’s hard to

Tried, Tested, & Tough

Spartan fans are ready to cheer their team to Indy and not just for the Big Ten Tournament. Photo courtesy of Mark Boomgaard

The 2010 Spartans are yet another battle tested Tom Izzo team readying to play for championships. If you look around, it’s hard to find a more experienced nucleus of players anywhere around the country. The Spartan Junior class first established its roots in Drew Neitzel’s final year on campus, when MSU made a run into the second weekend of the Big Dance before getting knocked out by John Calipari’s cheating fueled Memphis Tigers. And all but the Freshmen duo of Derrick Nix and Garrick Sherman were on board for last year’s amazing run to Ford Field. Relative to other teams who expect to compete for a trip to the coming Final Four, MSU will have a considerable edge in whatever region of the bracket the play.

“I don’t know if it makes us a better team skill wise, I down play that, but battle tested is a good word,” Tom Izzo told Spartan Nation early this week. In the last two games, we’ve seen the benefits of experience make the difference. “Definitely, what these guys have been through has helped,” Izzo explained. “It puts you in an environment and in a situation where the teams you play on early, you remember what it was like to be in those games and how you dealt with them.”

The last two Spartan wins have been a pleasant reminder of to two famous February wins from the 1999 Final Four season. The Spartan Nation remembers last second victories at Minnesota and Penn St., both finished off by Spartan Legend Mateen Cleaves, as a spark to a Maddening March. There’s no way we can say that the comeback win over the Gophers last Saturday, and the smoke and mirrors robbery that MSU pulled off in Ann Arbor on Tuesday night, will end up producing a similar result. But their similarity is evident and encouraging.

Cleaves was the best leader in major college sports of his era, and overstuffed his career scrap book to set the new standard of Point Guard play and leadership at MSU. Tom Izzo wanted Kalin Lucas so badly in Green and White because he believed Lucas could become that type of leader. As he closes in on his last year and a half at MSU, Lucas has made real progress towards reaching the Cleaves standard.

As the Spartans begin to make the turn into the season’s stretch run, they know they’re tested, know their tougher, and know they can win games in the final moments. Early this year, MSU pulled out what now appears to be an even bigger win against Gonzaga. The Spartans didn’t play their best that night, but had just enough talent and big game experience to get over on the visiting Bulldogs in the end. The same can be said for each of the 1-point victories enjoyed here in the last week. There’s no substitute for experience.

Though MSU is unbeaten in conference play to date, the Big Ten race is far from over. “There’s a lot to be said for each venue that everybody’s going into,” Bo Ryan told Spartan Nation earlier this week. “It’s been a very tough league, and it’s extremely competitive (right now).” Tom Izzo believes that too, and has reminded the Spartan Nation during MSU’s record breaking start that this race will continue to the end.

As the Spartans prepare to play Northwestern at home Saturday, they will again face the challenge of suffering a focus and intensity hang over. Though his team sits a perfect 8-0 in conference, the Dean of Big Ten Coaches wants MSU to get off to more consistent starts. “We’ve gotten off to some average starts against some very good teams,” Izzo admitted. “I don’t like that…but as long as we’re finishing, I think that’s what’s most important.”

Is it Really Even a Rivalry Anymore?

The win-loss record of the Michigan St.-Michigan football games suggested there wasn’t much of a competitive rivalry before the arrival of Mark Dantonio. The same can be said for the MSU-UM basketball matchup. 17 of the last 20 have now have gone to MSU, with one of three Michigan wins all but stolen from MSU by referees with jumpy whistles. Yet, Beilein’s Blue were within inches Tuesday night of getting their “must win,” in a game that somewhat resembled the painful MSU football loss to Michigan in ’07.

To their credit, Michigan Basketball has some resemblance of a program now. No longer are they led by the cheating, the incompetent, or the too calm and questionably dressed. John “L.” Beilein’s has a system. He appears a fine basketball man, and he will win some games at Michigan. I like to refer to him as John “L.” because in many ways he has reminded many people of John L. Smith. And that’s not all a knock on Beilein.

Like Smith, Beilein came to Michigan with a great resume of success at just about every level one could coach in. He arrived to Ann Arbor as a bit of an outsider to the Mid-West and Big Ten, but with a desire to compete on the game’s biggest stage. And like Smith, Beilein also brought to Michigan with a unique system, with a bit of natural charisma.

Beilein’s unique “spread” like offensive attack, if executed properly and with the right personnel, should afford Michigan a relative opportunity for success. I don’t believe Beilein will necessarily contend for a Big Ten title anytime soon, with his 3-jacking and seemingly rebound adverse system, but Michigan hasn’t won a Big Ten title since 1986 (yes, they got to keep that banner), before most of his players now had even been born. “You don’t realize, just a couple months ago they were ranked 7th in one poll,” Izzo reminded Spartan Nation. “This is a top 20 team that has just struggled a bit.”

Izzo’s assertion is legitimately debatable at this point, but there is still a good chunk of the season to go. Michigan simply hasn’t been as good as some believed before the season, and has come up just short at the end of a handful of games. “They’re a very good 3-point shooting team that’s just maybe struggled at times to make those,” Izzo believes. “But on any given night, they can be as potent as anybody that we play.”

Reasonable minds can differ about the system he runs, or the type of athletes he recruits, but the results will of course be the ultimate measure of whether Beilein will work at Michigan. To his credit, they look more organized and accountable now than they’ve been under past regimes of Michigan Basketball. Beilein represents a legitimate opportunity for basketball stability in Ann Arbor, a chance to make the NCAA’s more often than once a decade, and the chance to get streaky enough to maybe even make a run into the second weekend of the dance someday.

Michigan State and Michigan are the best in-state and sibling rival Universities in the country. The two compete at everything, and are both better for it. With Beilein in place, the Men’s Basketball contests are rebuilding towards competitiveness again. But Tuesday night was just another classic example of what happens when you’re out in the driveway playing one on one with your little brother. You get ahead, let him come back to think he’s won it, and then snatch it back away from him at the end with a smile.

Yoko the Logo?

To add another two cents to the hottest off-court topic of the week, I don’t think the new logo proposal is awful, but I also don’t think it’s an improvement on the current design. I like the fact that it leaked early enough to get reaction and feedback from the Spartan Nation. I would suggest that a merger between the current and the proposed idea could result in an overall improved product. Many have already taken to the internets with different “hybrid” designs that look quite promising.

While we’re on the issues of logos and colors, I think Michigan St. stands to benefit greatly by working with a group of universal colors, logos, and fonts. I also still hold the belief that the font size on the front of the football jerseys should be increased to make it easier to see, and to match the jerseys of the mid-60s. The idea of having the school name on the front of the jersey at a smaller font size than the player’s names on the back still doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t think it inspires the humility many of the players in this program still clearly need. Further, I hope the football team switches to black cleats when wearing the home Green jerseys. Again, they fit with the tradition, and suggest a more workman like approach. But the ultimate fashion or logo advice I have is the simple Al Davis philosophy, just win baby!