“I am moving some people around, some of it is by design,” the 14-year head coach said. “It’s going to be a little bit of musical chairs to see who plays and who plays consistently hard and who we can win with. It doesn’t always mean the best players, so the competition has been good for us.”

Izzo said he’s been swapping the most players in-and-out of the one, two and three positions, seeing what his guards can do with different teammates at their side at various points throughout practice.

One of those being sophomore guard Kalin Lucas, who is learning plays and getting the feel for not only the point guard spot, but the shooting guard position as well.

“We’re competing, competing very hard from one through 16,” said Lucas, who averaged 10.3 points in 25.1 minutes last season. “Everybody is playing hard and trying to get better.”

And to up the numbers in hope to make it to Detroit for the Final Four, he admitted he’s pushing his team harder than last fall.

Two for the price of one

With four practices down, Izzo said after a day of rest, the squad will move on to two-a-days, where the Spartans conduct two full practices in a 24-hour time period to up the team’s endurance, mental toughness and skill level.

“I want to make sure I’m pushing a little bit harder this year in this preseason stuff, because our goal is to try to get better every day and try to improve as a player and as a team and the only way to do that is to not let them have down days,” Izzo said.

And no one could be happier about that than junior guard Isaiah Dahlman, a workhorse who played just 61 total minutes last season compared to his 403 as a freshman, when the team’s depth wasn’t as impressive.

But Dahlman spoke up and decided to lead the scout team, doing anything in his power to be recognized.

“I want to play; last year it was a situation where the team pretty much had the rotation down and I wasn’t seeing a lot of action” said Dahlman, who still holds Minnesota’s all-time high school scoring record. “But I love this team and this program so much that I wanted to do anything I could, such as my role last year on the scout team. I want to get in that playing group and show everyone what I can do.”

Holding nothing back

Senior forward Marquise Gray has been a player whom Izzo has continuously demanded more from.

The only problem is, Izzo felt he got nothing from those demands. But with a whole new year comes a whole new ‘Quise.

“I think I gotta get what I didn’t get out of him for a couple years,” Izzo said. “I gotta get it all out of him this year because it’s his last year. I’ve been really pleased with Marquise since two-and-a-half, three weeks before practice started. He’s really starting to understand his lack of conditioning and he’s worked very hard on it. He’s much more consistent so that is exciting for me because he’s a great kid and a very good player still but things haven’t really gone his way and that’s been a little disappointing but there’s still time.”

And Gray knows who Izzo wants him to be — the player he recruited more than four years ago.

“(Coach wants me to be the) one that wasn’t injured and could run up and down and jump and rebound and bring energy and block shots throughout my career,” said Gray, who averaged 4.3 points and ripped down 132 rebounds in 36 games. “I kinda got sidetracked a bit for different reasons — injuries, mind wasn’t always right through some things. Now that I haven’t been injured and my mentality is right, I’m doing the things I need to do to be successful at this program at this level. He expects me to keep moving.”

While many think Izzo and Gray consistently butt heads, the 6-foot-8 Flint native said the two have a general understanding and it’s never meant in a hostile way — no matter how loud their exchange of words may escalate to.

“Coach is weird like that,” Gray said. “He’s one of the few coaches that likes stuff like that. The only thing is, he always say, ‘You can talk it,’ but he always wants you to walk it and to back it up. I yell at him but then I know I have to go get a dunk on somebody or get a blocked shot or a big rebound to back my yelling up.”