Coach's corner: Catching up with Tom Izzo

Nicole Auerbach, USA TODAY Sports | USATODAY

Each Friday leading up to the NCAA tournament, USA TODAY Sports' Nicole Auerbach catches up with a premier college basketball coach:

EAST LANSING, Mich. – This week, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo is happy – or as happy as he can be when he says he still can't tell how good his team is. (Here's my hint: Pretty good.) Izzo's Spartans are coming off their most spectacular and dominating win of the season, a 75-52 rout of rival Michigan, the best win Izzo said he's seen from his team in three years.

Once again, Michigan State is being touted as a Big Ten title contender (and is sitting atop the conference standings with Indiana at the moment) and a national championship contender, too. If there's one thing we've learned about college basketball this season, it's we should never count out a coach like Izzo and a balanced, talented team like the Spartans.

Sitting in his office Thursday morning, Izzo caught up with USA TODAY Sports about his team flying under the radar for much of the season, the brutal Big Ten schedule and what every great college basketball team needs – a fantastic leader.

Izzo on why people haven't been talking much about the Spartans until recently:

We had some question marks coming in. You have to remember the (Branden) Dawson (torn ACL). He didn't start shooting the ball again until September, so that's seven months. Most people say you aren't any good until the year after. Adrian Peterson kind of screwed up that theory. That was a key thing. Our point guard – would he come into his own? He was a 2 guard playing the point. Would he grow? We had a couple of freshmen we knew we'd have to rely on, especially (Denzel) Valentine and (Gary) Harris. Those are unknowns.

That, along with you take Michigan – they had (Trey) Burke and (Tim) Hardaway coming back. They had some things to plug, too, but usually a team is going to have a chance to go far with its guards. It's like if you have a great quarterback, you're going to have a better chance to go somewhere.

Usually, most years, we lose a couple of games early and we go from top five, top seven, top 12 to 20th and we're kind of off the radar. Most of the time, we play a schedule that's different than most people. This year, we lose to UConn and lose at Miami before Miami's anything.

Izzo on the challenge of Michigan State's upcoming Big Ten schedule:

(In a 17-day stretch starting Feb. 19), ours is Indiana here, at Ohio State, at Michigan and Wisconsin here. That's concentrated. If you threw something in there, like Penn State, then you at least have some breathing room. You have to get up for every game. That's harder than the NCAA tournament. In the NCAA tournament, there's more space in between. We just came off three games in six days. When you're traveling and going to school, that's hard. When everybody tries to compare these conferences, there is no comparison. I've been in this 30 years. There's no comparison to what the top teams in our league are going through.

Izzo on the importance of great leadership, like he had in recent years with Draymond Green:

He is rare. You know what happens with rare guys? You go to Final Fours. … That was another Jud (Heathcote) line when we won the national championship. He calls me four days later, and he always tells me I work too much. … He says, 'Take some time off. You better enjoy this.' I said, 'Yeah, I'll enjoy it.' He says, 'You really better enjoy it.' He says, 'You don't understand, this comes around every 20 years.' I say, 'Oh, I have to wait 20 more years to get to a Final Four, this or that?' Nope, he says, having that kind of leader. It was Magic (Johnson). It was Mateen (Cleaves). ... Thirteen years later, Draymond came around, and he's not far off.

That's what's missing at a lot of programs.

(Izzo then mentioned Indiana's Victor Oladipo and Michigan's Trey Burke and Tim Hardaway Jr. as guys, like Draymond Green, who weren't really, really hyped or highly rated coming out of high school but have developed into their teams' leaders. He also discussed how programs like Duke, UNC and Kansas have talented upperclassmen who could have gone pro stay, and then they in turn teach underclassmen how to grow into leaders. Interesting stuff about what makes these teams successful.)