Tom Izzo
Tom Izzo
Thomas Michael Izzois an American college basketball coach. Since 1995, he has been the head coach for the Michigan State Spartans men's basketball team, presiding over a prolonged period of success. On April 4, 2016, Izzo was elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame...
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth30 January 1955
CityIron Mountain, MI
earning towards
We're working towards it, but he's got to keep earning it, too.
boat games good lose next six team teams win
We've got a good enough team to win the next six games and we've got a good enough team to lose the next six games and I think a lot of teams are in that boat in this league.
address luxury
We will not have that luxury this year. But we will address it in other ways.
playing
We were out of energy. Playing Thursday-Saturday is a joke.
bothered defense illinois job played pressured prettiest
We weren't the prettiest -- Illinois really pressured us and it bothered us some -- but the defense we played and the job we did, I can't say enough.
athletic might people running team wearing
We want to get back to running and wearing people down. This might be our most athletic team ever.
anybody becomes carries far guys helps keeping mental mentally michigan state strain time
When you play that many (ranked teams) in a row, it becomes a mental strain as far as keeping your guys up. I think it helps that it's the Michigan game. I think our guys will be up for that. If there was going to be a time when they mentally let down a little bit, I don't see it being this week. Emotionally, it's Michigan-Michigan State and that carries more than anybody we play, let's be honest.
asked pad paul time
We asked Paul one time if he was doing that to pad his own rebounding stats or if he was doing it for real.
fun running
We were running everything through him. It was kind of fun to do for once.
brown felt stretch took
We had one stretch where we felt we were getting clobbered in there and Dee Brown took over. A combination of the two is not a pretty sight.
free good job
We did a pretty good job on a lot of guys, just free throws, free throws, free throws.
early good great played
We didn't play great but we played good enough to win. This was a step. How big a step? It's too early to tell.
balls shoot throwing
We really didn't shoot very well. We just missed. In that first half, we were just throwing balls at the basket.
earned looking overtime played team win
We played Gonzaga, we played Arizona, we played all these overtime games, and I told (my team during a late-game huddle ) I thought we've earned the right to win this game. I felt, looking at them in the eye, that they were looking back at me saying, 'Damn right we do, and we're going to get it done.' And that was encouraging.