Michigan State Basketball: Top 15 Players that have Played for Head Coach Tom Izzo

Tom Izzo is one of the best coaches ever in college basketball history. Here are the 15 best players that he’s ever had while at Michigan State.

Now and days, not many college basketball head coaches can make it five years with an individual program, let alone 23 full seasons.

That’s how long Tom Izzo has been with Michigan State, starting in the 1995-1996 season. It took a couple of rebuilding seasons to get things going, but the Spartans became a superpower in short time.

In 1998, Michigan State made the NCAA Tournament. That was the first of now 21 straight trips to the Big Dance, a streak that’s still active today. During that said streak, the Spartans have made seven Final Fours (three in a row from 1999-2001), with a national championship coming in 2000.

And while Izzo has certainly gotten some high-level recruits, most of the work has been around developing under the radar prospects into Big Ten stars. Since the start of the millennium, Michigan State has been ranked just about every single season, and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down anytime soon.

For the past month I’ve been ranking the best players from the top-25 coaches I listed in a previous piece. Izzo was ranked No. 6 on the list, right up there with the greats of the game.

For this list, I looked at the best Spartans from the century basically, taking into account their achievements, contributions to the team, and of course, how they and their respective team performed in March Madness.

Who will end up No. 1 on the best players that Izzo has coached?