On Friday night in Atlanta, Tom Izzo earned his 59th career NCAA Tournament victory as his No. 2 seed Michigan State Spartans defeated Ole Miss 73-70 in the South Regional Semifinal. It was a hard-fought come-from-behind win for Izzo’s team after trailing by double-digits in the first half, but the Big Ten regular season champs simply wouldn’t let their dream season come to an end.
Izzo has been reflective this season, invoking the mantra “strength in numbers” which he has admitted to stealing from Draymond Green’s Golden State Warriors, one of his favorite former players, and coaching the son of one of his former stars, Jason Richardson. So, after advancing to the Elite Eight for the first time since his 2019 Final Four run, the 70-year-old legend let his emotions bubble to the surface.
"Coach, are you tearing up?"
— CBS Sports College Basketball 🏀 (@CBSSportsCBB) March 29, 2025
Tom Izzo and Jase Richardson join @tracywolfson after an emotional win for @MSU_Basketball. pic.twitter.com/x2rdcTonOJ
As Izzo told CBS’s Tracy Wolfson, “I love these guys” it’s so easy to see how much he really means that, and how much ‘those guys” love their head coach back. As many of Izzo’s contemporaries, Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, and Jay Wright have moved on from the sport during the burgeoning of the NIL and transfer portal era, Izzo has adapted to modern college basketball while maintaining his old-school style, and he just keeps winning.
This season, Izzo played 10 players over 10 minutes a game and at times expanded his rotation to 11. That level of depth is unheard of in this era, not just because it’s difficult to acquire that much talent, but because that much talent is even more difficult to manage. Yet, Izzo has gotten his team to put their egos aside and after he cut the rotation to eight players in the Sweet 16, the entire group was bought in and celebrating in the postgame.
Michigan State will play either Auburn or Michigan in the Elite Eight, and no matter how far the team picked to finish fifth in the Big Ten can take this run, it’ll be one of the most memorable seasons in program history. This heart-warming moment from Izzo is just another reason why.