For a man who said goodbye to his 2009 team as reluctantly as a kid giving back a puppy, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo took the fastest possible route to this year's season kick-off.
He arrived in an Indy Car.
With the Final Four in Indianapolis, you don't exactly need your college lit professor to explain the symbolism of Izzo's Midnight Madness ride, (though the prof might help in search of the metaphor to describe what a 220-pound man wedged in a car the sized of a futon looks like). Then again, you might just consider it foreshadowing of a Big Ten race that'll be just as fierce as anything waged on the brickyard.
Please be sure to buckle up.
"I honestly see nine or 10 ... teams that could realistically win the league," Izzo said at the Big Ten media day. "Top to bottom, the league is the best it's been in a long time."
For a man who said goodbye to his 2009 team as reluctantly as a kid giving back a puppy, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo took the fastest possible route to this year's season kick-off.
He arrived in an Indy Car.
With the Final Four in Indianapolis, you don't exactly need your college lit professor to explain the symbolism of Izzo's Midnight Madness ride, (though the prof might help in search of the metaphor to describe what a 220-pound man wedged in a car the sized of a futon looks like). Then again, you could consider it it foreshadowing of a Big Ten race that will be just as fierce and clustered as anything waged on the brickyard.
Please be sure to buckle up.
"I honestly see nine or 10 ... teams that could realistically win the league," Izzo said at the Big Ten media day. "Top to bottom, the league is the best it's been in a long time."
In an effort to talk about something college basketball-related other than scandals in the summer, let's talk best current coaches. We'll attempt to order the top 25 current coaches in the nation. This is about the present and the future, not the distant past. What a guy did in the mid-90s doesn't matter near as much as the direction his program is currently headed. Past pedigree also matters, to an extent. For the perfect mix of past accomplishments with present achievement and a paved road for future success, look no further than the man atop the list.
In 2008, the Big Ten sent only four teams to the NCAA tournament. None reached the Elite Eight The Big Ten toiled down with mid-majors in conference RPI and were nationally maligned as the "Average 11." This past season, however, the league enjoyed a resurgence. It ranked only behind the ACC in conference RPI. Seven schools earned a berth into the NCAA tournament, and Penn State won the NIT. Michigan State toppled the defending national champions and two number one seeds en route to a national runner-up finish.
The Michigan State Spartans concluded a very successful season just over a week ago. They rode a two-seed past the defending champions, the top overall seed, and a supremely talented Connecticut squad before falling to the obvious best team in the nation, the NCAA champion Tar Heels.
After a brief rest, the Spartans will eventually get back to work in East Lansing, and it won't be a rebuilding project. It will be a reloading one. They did lose Goran Suton, Travis Walton and Marquise Gray to graduation, but there's plenty left for Tom Izzo to make another Final Four run -- one that would be his sixth in the past 12 years.
DETROIT -- He's overrated. He's awkward. He will be a role player, at best, in the NBA. He cost himself lots of money by coming back to college this year. He's credited as working harder than everyone else, and that's entirely unfair to everyone else, maybe even with a racial hint to it.
I'm pretty sure I still feel all of those things about Tyler Hansbrough, who has touched a nerve to half of college basketball's fans, rubbed it raw. Also, national analysts just never stop forcing him down our throats.
DETROIT -- They celebrated together, arm in arm, bouncing and hugging and laughing and ultimately crying as the confetti buried them. It isn't the best time for traditional brand names in America, with even the surest things reduced to chilling vulnerability in a volatile, wacky world. But the North Carolina basketball name, a constant for ages in this country, remains safe and secure.
DETROIT -- They celebrated together, arm in arm, bouncing and hugging and laughing and ultimately crying as the confetti buried them. It isn't the best time for traditional brand names in America, with even the surest things reduced to chilling vulnerability in a volatile, wacky world. But the North Carolina basketball name, a constant for ages in this country, remains safe and secure.
This certainly wasn't the same Michigan State team we watched the past two weekends. But it was the same North Carolina team we all thought, back in November, was the best team in the country by a mile.
If ever a national championship game felt like a coronation, it was 2009.
There were reasons, over the past three months, to doubt these Tar Heels. There was Ty Lawson's bum toe. There was that weird and inexplicable loss to Boston College. There were memories of the way they went out, too soon, in the tournament the past two years. The 2007 collapse against Georgetown. The 2008 pasting by Kansas.
For a man who said goodbye to his 2009 team as reluctantly as a kid giving back a puppy, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo took the fastest possible route to this year's season kick-off.
In 2008, the 
The Michigan State Spartans concluded a very successful season just over a week ago. They rode a two-seed past the defending champions, the top overall seed, and a supremely talented Connecticut squad before falling to the obvious best team in the nation, the NCAA champion Tar Heels. 
