Izzo is to blame

I did not watch the MSU-OSU game yesterday and frankly, maybe its best that I didnt. MSU blew a 10 point second half lead and lost to a very weak opponent. The turnover problems that many Spartan fans had hoped
were gone, returned in dramatic fashion to the tune of 21 turnovers.

To put it bluntly, 21 turnovers isn’t acceptable on any level of basketball. Certainly not in college, not in high school and hell, it would be sloppy even for a kiddie game.

So where does the blame lie? Most fans are reluctant to blame Coach Izzo because of the wild success he had 8 years ago. But therein lies the problem. 8 years ago was the last time this team had expectations and
actually met them. Even the 2005 team had to sneak their way into a final four via a 5 seed.

The last time this team won a regular season championship was 2001. To put that into perspective, if next year State fails to win the Big Ten again, two full recruiting classes will have come through here without raising that banner.

For years we kept saying, “oh, we lost some players early to the draft, its hard to recover from that”. After that we said, “well Hill, Anderson and Torbert weren’t Izzo type players”. And still after that fans said, “Davis, Ager and Brown were good players but didnt play well as a team”.

Hmmm?

The one constant in all of this is the coaching staff. A coaching staff in my opinion who has done its worst job to date. Make no bones about it, 12-6 this year in this conference is not something MSU should hang their hat on. The road losses to Iowa, Penn State and even Ohio State are embarrassing. And when was the last time MSU went on the road in conference and beat someone they weren’t supposed to?

Its been so long I can’t remember.

I defended Tom Izzo for years from the likes of rival fans who said that he had one good run and after that, was no different than many other programs in the country. I pointed to the elite eight in 2003 and the final four in 2005 as examples. But if Tom Izzo believes his program is elite, it cannot be defined by a few games here and there in March. There needs to be a time when this team steps up and wins game they shouldn’t. They need to win games on the road. They need to win regular season championships.

6-19 on the road in the last three years in Big Ten play does not scream elite. It screams mediocrity. And frankly, if Izzo doesn’t change something soon, that’s what the program he made will become.

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