Steven Mateen Izzo knew exactly what he was getting himself into if his dad and the MSU men’s basketball team beat Tennessee in the Elite Eight on Sunday.
“He said, ‘Dad, three good things happen next week if we win,’” MSU head coach Tom Izzo said.
Getting MSU to Final Four is 'family affair'
“‘We get to go to a hotel with a pool.’ I said, ‘Well, what about playing?’ And he said, ‘We get to play in the game and I get to miss two days of school.’”
Steven isn’t the only member of the extended MSU basketball family jazzed about the Spartans’ return trip to the Final Four.
Although so much of the Spartans’ six trips to national semifinals in the last 12 years has been made about Izzo, the program’s success truly has been a family affair.
From the managers to former student-athletes and the players’ mothers, athletes always talk about the team in terms of a family.
And with former players such as Mateen Cleaves, Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Morris Peterson returning or calling in March, Izzo said those things never change.
“That’s number one for me,” Izzo said.
“It really is. Players will come and go. Going is one thing. Gone is another. A lot of programs have players that come and go but are gone.”
Izzo said Cleaves already has been back to see the Spartans, Peterson has called and Johnson was in St. Louis for the Sweet 16.
At the Edward Jones Dome with his dad, brother and uncle, Johnson said he’d be in Indianapolis with more family members.
“Magic, because he lives in this town, has been kind of the pied piper of that,” Izzo said.
“Then you get to the Steve Smith era, the Eric Snow era, the Mateen Cleaves era, all those different groups that maintain what we like to see.”
The success of the program goes beyond Izzo’s kin and former teammates. The family also entails MSU assistants, who Izzo credited with much of the team’s winning ways.
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“There’s so much talk about what I’ve accomplished and it’s really what we’ve accomplished,” Izzo said.
“Those guys have been with me for three of those Final Fours. They’re loyal to me, they’re loyal to this program and I’d never question that part of it.”
Associate head coach Mark Montgomery, assistant coach Dwayne Stephens and assistant coach Mike Garland have been with the program for a combined 26 seasons.
Garland has had head coaching experience at Cleveland State and Montgomery often has been tabbed as the next assistant to receive a head coaching gig.
Izzo’s extensive coaching tree already includes head coaches Tom Crean (Indiana), Stan Heath (South Florida), Jim Boylen (Utah), Brian Gregory (Dayton) and Doug Wojcik (Tulsa).
“I’ve gotten way too much (credit),” Izzo said.
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“I don’t say it with humility; I say it with honesty. I do my job. I work. But when I turn the lights off, there’s usually two to three guys in the rooms next to me with the lights still on.”
When the Spartans enter the public spotlight this weekend in Indianapolis, much of the focus will be on the present: this year’s improbable Final Four run, the injuries to key players, Izzo’s preparation to beat Butler.
But the aura surrounding the Spartans’ ensemble dates back generations and will be instilled in future Spartans.
“The problem is I complain about you guys or our fans thinking the Final Four’s on the schedule,” Izzo joked, in reference to his children (Raquel and Steven) who have seen Izzo as a head coach their entire lives.
“Do they understand the magnitude? No, because they’ve been brought up on it.”
