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Brutal nonconference schedule will prepare team for postseason

October 15, 2003

A nonconference schedule as difficult as the MSU men's basketball team's this season is giving head coach Tom Izzo and his team two options - do or die.

With an updated urgency surrounding the Spartans to win a championship this season - not just games, as Izzo put it - games against heavyweights Duke, Kentucky and Oklahoma within state lines and road trips to Kansas, UCLA and Syracuse are giving MSU a chance to make an early mark as a national title contender.

But is it best to play top teams and risk burning out early, or prepare for the best and learn from tough defeats?

Izzo prefers the latter.

"What we're trying to say is, look at the schedule and look at a couple years ago when we dropped off a little bit and look at last year," Izzo said at Tuesday's MSU Media Day. "We could've played some patsies, and we decided not to.

"When you go to Kentucky you're going to lose nine out of 10 times. When you go to Kansas you're going to lose nine or eight out of 10 times."

To be sure, the Spartans do have a history of playing tough opponents in nonconference scheduling, but the likes of this season's schedule stand to make history of their own. No team has ever played Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, Syracuse and UCLA in the same regular season.

Against those opponents, MSU is 22-28 all-time. The Spartans failed to beat Duke in three tries in the 1990s. They haven't beaten Syracuse on the road since 1946 and are 0-2 lifetime in Lawrence, Kan.

Last season, the Spartans won on the road against Kentucky, fell to Oklahoma at a neutral-site game in Oklahoma City and lost to Syracuse at home late in the regular season.

Izzo's candid reasoning for the tough schedule only affirmed his desire for more hardware

"I just want to make it clear that we're (scheduling tough) because I'm a selfish S.O.B.," he said. "I want to get something out of my career at MSU; I want to make sure that the players that I promised will play the best will be on TV. They're going to get a chance to go against the best and I want to keep my promise to them."

One of MSU's newest, highly regarded freshman guard Shannon Brown, said he'd never seen anything like the preparation involved for such a rigorous slate of opponents.

"As a team, I think we've prepared and we're real hungry for it," Brown said. "We've been working hard like we have been all summer.

"Before (preparing for the season), I didn't know basketball was supposed to be this hard."

Youth is proving to be no excuse, though. Senior center Jason Andreas, the last player linked to MSU's 2000 national championship, said the tough early-season schedule is the key to "cutting them down."

"We talk about it every day - we talk about winning championships," he said. "Our motto this year is 'Cut 'em down,' obviously cutting the nets down when you win a championship.

"The schedule reiterates that feeling. We're not playing a bunch of easy teams. We're playing the best teams in the nation, and I think that'll prepare us for winning a championship."

Just don't expect any relenting should MSU have regular or postseason success. More is on the way next season as the 2004-2005 schedule includes a possible road trip to Maryland.

"Next year's schedule is going to be as good or better as this year's schedule," Izzo said. "And until I lose enough games that they fire me, I'm going to have the best schedule and we're going to play the best people.

"We're going to play them every single year."

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