COLUMBUS, Ohio — A few minutes after 11 p.m. on Selection Sunday, an email from Michigan State‘s athletic communications department underscored the basketball program’s ubiquity this time of year. Izzo Sets Record for Most Consecutive NCAA Tournament Appearances as Spartans Extend Streak to 25 Straight, the subject line read, and the body of the message explained how head coach Tom Izzo, now 68 years old, had surpassed former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski’s mark of 24 uninterrupted bids.
At 19-12 overall and with a modest 11-8 mark in conference play, the Spartans have entered March Madness largely devoid of external pressure for a third consecutive season. They began the year unranked, climbed into the Top 25 after beating Kentucky and Villanova in back-to-back games — the former on a neutral court, the latter at the Breslin Center — before tumbling out of the polls for good in early December. Izzo believed his team had a chance to win the Big Ten Tournament after rounding into form with five victories in seven games to end the regular season, but Michigan State was quickly upended, 68-58, in a sluggish loss to 13th-seeded Ohio State.
Last week’s deflation in Chicago extended one of the more languid periods of Izzo’s empyrean career in East Lansing that includes parts of four decades. His average seed during the first 22 NCAA Tournament appearances of this remarkable run was 4.6 between 1998 and 2019, a stretch in which he made eight Final Fours and captured the second national title in school history. But over the last three years — as Michigan State won just 31 of 59 conference games for a .525 winning percentage that paled in comparison to Izzo’s career mark of .675 — the Spartans’ average seed slipped to 8.3 after bottoming out as an 11-seed in 2021, failing to advance beyond the First Four.
“I feel like you come here to get to a Final Four,” guard Tyson Walker said on Thursday. “That’s kind of like the staple. Just making it out the first weekend is good, but we’re trying to make a run. Coach has done it. We’ve just got to follow his lead.”
How much staying power this year’s 7-seed team has will be examined Friday, at 12:15 p.m. ET, against No. 10 USC, with the winner of that game expected to face second-seeded Marquette on Sunday. But for a certain faction of Michigan State’s rabid fans, anything the Spartans accomplish this week at Nationwide Arena is a bonus considering the…
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