It's no secret Tom Izzo has borrowed a few principles from his other favorite sport, football, during his career as MSU men's basketball head coach. Most followers of the program remember when Izzo put his team through a rebounding drill in full football gear, and tackling bags still make an appearance at practice from time to time.
But less publicized is Izzo's commitment to another aspect of gridiron strategy — special teams.
At first, applying that concept to basketball might seem out of place. Isn't the sport just about scoring baskets and trying to keep the other team from doing the same?
Well, think how many situations don't fall neatly under those umbrellas.
Free throws. Jump balls. Inbound plays on the sideline and baseline. Press breaks. Two-for-one situations.
Dozens of plays like this come up every game. And Izzo has something drawn up for all of them.
"If we need it," junior guard Drew Neitzel said, "it's there."
Although most coaches have plays like that in their arsenal, Izzo's framing of them in football terms — and the extent to which he stresses them — is quite unique.
He came up with the idea in his first year as MSU's head coach, when he was visiting Steve Mariucci's minicamp with the San Francisco 49ers. Seeing how much impact special teams had there, he started thinking how they might translate to the hardwood.
"Every time the ball is stopped, there's a good chance somebody's relaxing," Izzo said. "Let's make sure we're the team attacking."
Of course, just as an NFL team can't plan its whole game around punt returns, Izzo doesn't rely too heavily on special teams. No matter how well executed these plays are, they might only yield a basket or two a game. But when you consider that six of MSU's eight losses this season have come by single digits, you see how important that can be.
"A lot of games you play, it comes down to five, six, seven points," sophomore guard Travis Walton said. "Those points of the game are big."
The biggest problem is that plays like this take a lot of time to perfect. And since injuries to an already thin roster have deprived this year's Spartans of adequate time to practice even the basics of their offense and defense, there just hasn't been time to get into intricacies of things like the jump ball.
It's painfully ironic — in a year when the offensively challenged Spartans could use those extra baskets more than ever, they haven't had an opportunity to do so.
"Every day, (my coaches and I) sit down and I say, 'OK, give me some things you think we've got to work on,'" Izzo said. "And it's always special teams. 'We've got to work harder on our free-throw line stuff, got to work harder on our out-of-bounds plays, got to work harder on our press breaker.' They come up with some great things.
"And then I say, 'OK, so which one of you guys is going to take the fall for the four-hour practice when the NCAA throws me in jail?' That's about the way it is."
Still, the Spartans manage to work these plays into games every so often. Early in the season, with MSU trailing Maryland by two and Neitzel on the line with just a few seconds left, Izzo had something ready. It called for Neitzel to intentionally miss the shot to one side, then have the big men on the blocks screen for each other to open up somebody for a tip-in. Neitzel placed his shot perfectly, but the tip rimmed out as time expired.
"It was a pretty good miss," Neitzel said. "The play worked."
But plays like that have become less common lately as MSU's lack of preparation time has begun catching up with it. The Spartans have had major problems both defending and executing inbound plays in recent weeks, and Izzo cited a botched rebounding assignment on a free throw as a turning point in last week's loss to Ohio State.
Those struggles have only confirmed Izzo's belief in the value of special teams — as did watching Sunday's Super Bowl, which featured a kick return for touchdown, two missed kicks and four turnovers before halftime.
"I'm not sure I cared who won, but I was smiling the whole time," Izzo said. "I just wanted to tape the whole thing and say, 'Here team, this is what I'm talking about.'"
