ROSEMONT, Ill. — Tom Izzo wanted to talk about defending champion Michigan State’s upcoming season at Big Ten media day.

Instead, he used Thursday to get a few things off his chest.

Nine months’ worth of grievances emphatically poured out of Izzo during his nearly hour-long roundtable with reporters. The 24th-year coach reserved his strongest comments for ESPN and its usage of a photo with Izzo, football coach Mark Dantonio and disgraced sports medicine doctor Larry Nassar during the Outside the Lines segment on sexual assault allegations in the football and basketball programs.

“It was about 'Izzo and Dantonio hid.' It wasn’t about what happened, it was about a picture that will go down for the rest of my life as the lowest part of my life, being on there with a pedophile that I was on there with,” Izzo said. “So those things, I can’t change anything that I really don’t know anything. And I can’t change anything that I did exactly what the procedures and the policies said.

“Now, could I go beyond those things? That’s up for everybody’s debate. But the time and place that everything happened, it was handled in the best way it could be handled. And so I regret that it happened.”

Izzo’s back-and-forth with both regional and national reporters often flowed between topics, his views on the Nassar situation often overlapping questions about multiple investigations into his own program, including a number of them first made public in ESPN’s report in January.

Those incidents in the story included allegations of two sexual assaults involving five former players and another incident at an East Lansing bar involving former player Travis Walton when he was a student assistant coach. All of those incidents reportedly happened in 2010. In February, ESPN reported on another player who was accused of sexual assault in the fall of 2017 but eventually not charged.

Another federal case filed in April involved an alleged 2015 sexual assault that was never reported to police but involved a woman and three players, none of whom were named in the lawsuit. On that case, which is still active in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan Southern Division, Izzo said: “The only thing I heard on that whole thing is that the lawyers said the coaches knew nothing about this."

“I’m still American enough to hope there is a due process,” Izzo said. “I’m not proud of anything that happened at our place as far as that (Nassar) situation went. As far as accusations of what players did or not, if there would have been a time where a player was found guilty of something, I promise you he will not be on this team. He will not be on this team. But if you want me to be, what is the word, a vigilante, to go out and do justice, I can’t do that. I got a lot of kids. I can’t do that.”

MSU also was initially implicated in the FBI probe into the college basketball corruption and fraud case, including Izzo, assistant coach Dwayne Stephens and the parents of former star Miles Bridges. Bridges’ case was rectified by the NCAA days after the Yahoo! Sports report and he was cleared to play after a brief two-day suspension. The Spartans’ coaches got some clearance during the federal trial last week when an attorney for Brian Bowen said MSU was one school that refused pay for the Saginaw native’s services.

Junior point guard Cassius Winston said he could tell Izzo was affected and changed by the past 10 months.

"You could definitely tell. Any time somebody's attacking your character like that, it's gong to take a toll on you," Winston said. "He probably felt that in a lot of ways. And he used that in a positive way almost, just trying to motivate us. But you could tell it was taking a toll on him.

"We just tried to go as hard as we possibly could. He was going through a lot off the court, so we were trying to take care of as much on the court as we could."

Izzo was asked how his offseason went after dealing with those allegations and issues during the second half of a season in which the Spartans went 30-5, won the Big Ten regular season title but then lost in the league tournament semifinals to Michigan and the second round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament to Syracuse.

“I mean the offseason, if I used the word good, you know, I’m not going to use the word move on. I’m going to use the words that I learned a lot,” he said. “I had a great appreciation for what all kinds of different people went through. … So I have a few new missions in life. Win another championship is one of them. Used to be for a while that was the only one. So I’ve grown up as a coach too a little bit.

“The offseason? It’s been a tough eight, nine months for many, many, many people. Time doesn’t heal, time helps heal. And learning helps heal. So I’m gonna use those two things — time and what I’ve learned — to try and help heal.”

Related:

Michigan State's Tom Izzo: 'We got to finish the job now' is team motto

Big Ten's Jim Delany still firmly against paying college athletes

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari. Download our Spartans Xtra app for free on Apple and Android devices!