92.
That’s how many days are in a meteorological summer. For college football and basketball fans, those 92 days can feel like 392. For someone like me, a guy who is paid to write and podcast about Michigan State sports, it feels like 1,000,092.
As the days grow longer and the wait for the return of our beloved Spartans grows shorter, I must claw through the muck to find things to write about. And what could be better to write about than the happiest of sports memories?
I say not much.
So today, I’m going to rank Tom Izzo’s Final Fours. This is something I did recently on the Locked On Spartans Podcast, although it was a listener segment and I had the listener gives his rankings. I thought it was a good idea and so I’m stealing it for myself.
The factors for this ranking will be simple and yet kind of complex: How awesome was it?
It’s a pretty straightforward ranking, with many variables. Extra points may be awarded for an underdog run, or they may not be. There could be extra points for winning in the Final Four, or not. I’m not being overly strict with this. I’m just doling out rankings based on how enjoyable it all was. The nice part about this is it is totally subjective and gives a ton of leeway for you the reader to disagree with me, although I doubt you’d ever do anything like that because my rankings are of course going to be perfect and infallible.
With that said, let’s get it going: (and excuse the slideshow, but the post would look so bad if I just listed straight down on one page. trust me on this one guys.)
8. 2001
This may have been the easiest spot to fill out. The 2000-2001 Spartans were an incredible team and making it to a third straight Final Four is an incredible achievement. It speaks to how amazing the Izzo era has been that this one is in last place. The team was coming off a national championship in 2000 and it being the third straight Final Four takes some luster off the excitement. Plus, the run to the Final Four wasn’t noteworthy with 9-seed Fresno State being the highest seeded team MSU beat and a seven point win against 11-seed Temple in the Elite Eight isn’t quite beating Duke in 2019. Add in the fact that MSU got trounced by Arizona in the Final Four and 2001 slots in at the bottom.
7. 2005.
I know. It’s insane that 2005 is all the way down here, but it is. Michigan State has had some incredible runs. This team was a five-seed and after a short post-Flintstone lull, re-established Tom Izzo as Mr. March. There were some incredible wins too. Beating a loaded Duke team in the Sweet 16 was somehow trumped by the insane double-OT thriller against Kentucky in the Elite Eight. Plus, the signature college basketball moment of Patrick Sparks hitting a three to tie the game and then a review that lasted 72 hours to determine whether or not it was a three and then back and forth they went until MSU prevailed in double OT. It was amazing. The downside to this Final Four; MSU was headed into it with two of the best college basketball teams of the decade. Illinois and North Carolina were the stories of college hoops that year and MSU didn’t have a prayer beyond the Elite Eight as they were easily dispatched by UNC in the Final Four.
6. 2015
The seventh-seed Spartans are the lowest seeded Tom Izzo team to make it to the Final Four. This run gets the nod over 2005 because the entire run was incredible. The Spartans hold off Georgia in the first round before pulling a second straight massive upset of Virginia in the second round. That win was incredible and if you asked me to define Michigan State under Tom Izzo by one game (which is a truly impossible task) I might go with the 2015 win over UVA. It was just so damn gutty. MSU squeaks out a win over Oklahoma to get to the Elite Eight and then gets revenge on Rick Pitino and Louisville in the Elite Eight with an incredible overtime win. Travis Trice and Branden Dawson went from goats to THE GOATS in this run. Also, this run was a year after the “every player that stayed four years at MSU under Izzo made a Final Four” trend was broken in 2014. Unfortunately a thumping from Duke awaited them in the Final Four.
5. 2010
Man, what could have been. This run had one of the most heartbreaking and seemingly “what if” moments in MSU hoops history when Kalin Lucas tore his Achilles in the second round. MSU was up big against Maryland, Lucas gets hurt and eventually the Terps and Greivis Vásquez (that frickin’ guy)came all the way back and MSU looked done. Then Korie Lucious hits one of the biggest shots in school history, a buzzer-beating three that sends MSU into the Sweet 16. Plus, Durrell Summers goes on the craziest run ever, catapulting MSU passed Northern Iowa and Tennessee and into the Final Four. Draymond Green showed what he was about to become and Raymar Morgan hit a huge clutch free throw to top the Vols. Of course, MSU would lose to a Butler team that we now know was wayyyyy better than we all thought, but this run will always be remembered for the Lucas injury and the Lucious shot.
4. 1999
The first one for Izzo has to be high up on the list. Remember, Tom Izzo’s tenure didn’t get off to the greatest of starts. It’s hard to think it possible, but Izzo’s first two teams were NIT teams. In the third year there were signs of progress with a run to the Sweet 16. Still, this was a long way from Magic in 1979. The end of Jud’s time at MSU was full of early NCAA Tournament exits and there was certainly some frustration that came along with that. Izzo got the job and a few years in it hadn’t really paid off yet. Then the Flintstones got to campus and there was some promise that ended too early in the tournament in 1998. Then in 1999 it all came together. MSU steamrolled through the Big Ten, winning the conference by SIX GAMES. Even still, they needed success deep in March to really cement this thing and boy did they get that. They won some tough games as they cruised through the region and then beat a really good Kentucky team to get to the program’s first Final Four in 20 years. It wasn’t know yet, but the foundation had been laid for MSU to become one of the top college basketball programs in the country.
3. 2009
There was just so much amazing in this run. This team was just rugged and defined MSU hoops under Izzo. They were really good and honestly probably a year ahead of schedule given all the guys that were slated to come back the next season. Then you factor in making the Final Four in Detroit during a time in which Detroit was a national embarrassment. It was the murder capital of the world. The Great Recession was ramping up. The auto industry was in shambles. The city was desolate and the people of Michigan were hurting. Sports don’t fix societal problems, but they can help soothe them. Sports can provide moments of joy and distraction. That’s exactly what made the run in 2009 so great. Michigan and Detroit needed something to get excited about and hosting the Final Four with a local team in it was special. MSU had really great wins against Kansas and Louisville to get to the Final Four and that was great, but this ranking is about what happened after. UCONN could have brought with them Ray Allen, Rip Hamilton, the 2011 version of Kemba Walker and Caron Butler and it wouldn’t have mattered. Nobody was beating MSU in that first game. And the dunk. Dear God the Durell Summers dunk.
This dunk made it a ten point game with six minutes left. That’s plenty of time and a normal game would be far from over. But at that moment, when Summers stole Stanley Robinson’s soul in front of 60,000 people, the game was over. UCONN was done. There’s no way to overcome that moment and they didn’t. Unfortunately MSU ran into the best college basketball team on the 2000’s in the title game or else this run would be a surefire #1.
2. 2019
I may be succumbing to recency bias, so we’ll see how this shakes out years from now. But the 2019 team is my favorite team in the Tom Izzo era. The injuries, the reinventions, incredible comeback after comeback, sweeping Michigan. This team had it all and they were so much fun to root for. I couldn’t have been prouder of a group of guys wearing MSU uniforms. As for the run itself, MSU escaped demons of NCAA tournaments past by squeaking through Bradley in the first round. Then it was boat race city until a matchup with Duke in the Elite Eight, one of if not the best games of the year. MSU wasn’t given much of a shot against a Duke team that had three future top-ten picks and the best NBA prospect since LeBron James. 2018-2019 in college hoops was the year of Zion Williamson and you couldn’t write a better script than having a former walk-on in Kenny Goins hitting a game winning three over the outstretch hand of Zion, the most famous college basketball player in modern history. It was poetry. Oh and Matt McQuaid killed a guy with a dunk. 2019 was an incredible year capped off by an amazing run. The Final Four loss to Texas Tech certainly stings, but after the heartbreak of 2016 and 2018, 2019 was the bounce back MSU hoops needed.
2000
Number one with a bullet for obvious reasons. Izzo’s only national title and the cementation of MSU on the national scene as a basketball power. It’s funny look back on it, because the run was lacking some drama. MSU bulldozed teams and won pretty comfortably the whole way. Wisconsin tried to ruin it all by playing the worst college basketball game they possibly could in the Final Four, but MSU got by them again. The championship game provided the most drama with Florida hanging tough and Mateen Cleaves spraining his ankle during the game. There was certainly some drama there, but it was short lived as Cleaves came back into the game, leading an MSU run and putting the championship on ice. It was of course an incredible team with so many MSU legends. It set the standard for basketball under Tom Izzo and hung one of two national title banners in the Breslin Center rafters.
