But the sad end to the season won’t ruin the surprisingly successful year for Izzo, Green or the rest of the Spartans.

“Just from where we came from, from the beginning of the year,” Green said. “No one thought we were going to be anything. And we couldn’t have asked for a better year. We could have asked for a better ending, but the year couldn’t get any better.”

The broken season last year that saw the Spartans go from preseason No. 2 to out of the NCAA Tournament in the first round, combined with the return of just two 20-plus minute players in Green and sophomore guard Keith Appling, left this season with no expectations.

Prior to the season, there was talk — mostly from Izzo — that Green was one of the best leaders he’s had as a head coach. Still, many had no idea what to expect from the Spartans.

Then the unranked Spartans traveled to San Diego to open the season on one of the most unusual stages ever: an aircraft carrier. Then-No. 1 North Carolina walloped MSU in front of a national audience and the President.

A few days later, and a loss to Duke in New York seemed to signal nothing special was going to happen this season.

But then the inexperienced team rallied off 15-straight victories, including a couple on the road at Gonzaga and Wisconsin that changed what Izzo thought of his team.

But the Big Ten season opened up strong, and Izzo kept talking about how Ohio State still was the favorite to win the conference. Even after the Spartans went to Columbus, Ohio, and beat the Buckeyes, Izzo maintained his stance.

Although that might have been proved correct when Ohio State evened the season series and won at Breslin Center to tie for a Big Ten championship.

Closing their careers
Seniors Green and guard Austin Thornton accomplished a lot in their careers: a Big Ten Tournament championship, two Final Fours and three Big Ten championships.

“We know we did some things at Michigan State that haven’t been done in a long time,” Thornton said. “We (were) able to win the conference championship and won the Big Ten Tournament, and that was special.”

And those accomplishments are something that come from being a team. The chemistry of this season’s Spartans was something that doesn’t come around all that often, Izzo said.

“This is not the most talented team I’ve had, and not even in the top five, six or seven in my mind,” Izzo said. “But it’s been — it should be a learning team for a lot of ways you can get it done. And if everybody sticks together, you can get it done.”

Much of that chemistry stemmed from the leaders, Green and Thornton. Especially the vocal Green, who turned into an All American.

Green went from a tubby freshman with talent to a svelte workhorse with a will to win. This season saw him escalate into one of the Spartan greats, becoming one of three players in MSU history to score 1,000 points and grab 1,000 rebounds. He now sits atop the all-time rebounding list at MSU.

“Draymond is a special player, and he’s one of the main reasons we’ve had the year we’ve had,” Thornton said Wednesday. “There’s no doubt coming into this year he could have been a lot more selfish and could have understood he had the opportunity to put up big-time numbers. But he did a really great job of really involving everyone. … If our star can be that unselfish and help this team, the rest of us can do the same.”

Green’s efforts helped get the Spartans to places no one expected them to go this season. But he admits the team didn’t get as far as people ended up expecting them to go, or where he wanted to go.

“We got past the point of everyone counting us out, but looking back on it, it was great, couldn’t ask for a better run,” Green said. “Of course, we would have liked to finish out in New Orleans, but sometimes you just don’t get a storybook ending.”