As a head coach, Mark Dantonio isn’t afraid to give praise to players or teams when credit is due. That was no different Wednesday afternoon when he first stepped to the podium for the spring football press conference.
Before refusing to make another statement on his list of suspended athletes as practice gets underway Tuesday and before reiterating the towering expectations that his team has going into this season, part of Dantonio’s opening statement was to congratulate the team that’ll play in the Sweet 16 in Syracuse, New York, on Friday night.
While Tom Izzo has made his hatred toward social media known throughout the regular season, Dantonio’s Twitter presence over the past few months has quickly put him into a group of few coaches who use the application to garner interest of the program.
That being said, social media also provided Dantonio with an interesting statistic on Monday that was unknown to him before scrolling through his feed.
In the past four years, MSU is the only institution in the NCAA that has won four bowl games while also advancing in the Sweet 16 four straight times, a stat that shows how successful the top two revenue sports on campus have fared this decade.
“Tremendous job ... by coach Izzo and the entire basketball team,” Dantonio said at Breslin Center. “Pretty amazing at what’s being done here. Not just basketball and football but in all sports. Once again, congratulations.”
This is not the first time Izzo and Dantonio have shown how close of friends they are. From supporting each other at their respective games, or in the media it seems that even though they have two different personalities in two different sports, they have formed a formidable friendship.
How have these two individuals established a bond that’s lasted for close to a decade? Familiarity and time.
Since Izzo took over as head coach of the basketball program before the 1995-1996 season, there have been five football coaching changes, all in a span of 12 years. Nick Saban, Bobby Williams, John L. Smith and Morris Watts have had their share of the reigns after Izzo was promoted from assistant coach, a position he held for more than 12 years.
Now, going into this ninth season as the sideline general at Spartan Stadium, Dantonio understands the impact Izzo and his team have had on MSU for the past 20 years. The same goes for Izzo, who has since competed for popularity with Dantonio and the football team ever since the latter arrived on the scene at East Lansing.
