ATLANTA — Over the low rumble of a running bus engine, Tom Izzo took a long second to think about all of this. He dropped a backpack on the pavement and folded his arms. Flashing red hazards lit up a man that’s seen everything but hasn’t stopped looking for more.
It was 8:50 p.m. on Sunday, down by the loading dock of State Farm Arena, and another March had come to an end. Auburn was too good. Or at least Johni Broome was too good. Izzo hadn’t slept for many, if any, of the 36 hours preceding the game, consumed with the idea of not only reaching the ninth Final Four of his career, but of taking this team, of all teams, to San Antonio for the experience of a lifetime. Now that the dream has officially passed, fading from view in a 70-64 loss, he was left with the glow of a bus and some thoughts.
“You know, I didn’t take them on a journey,” Izzo said. “I think this year they took me on a journey. For a guy who gets to say he’s done it all? That’s good s—. That’s why I say this year has reinvigorated me. I’m just so appreciative. Seriously, who saw this coming?”
Sometimes the harder days bring the most mobile perspective. That, for Izzo, was Sunday.
At this point the 70-year-old can do nothing to shake his place in the game. Izzo is the one of the last men of his era standing, a label that he both acknowledges and bitterly resents. Most of his contemporaries have bailed, taking sunset walks into emeritus jobs, or retiring to TV gigs, or plainly walking away in personal protest of college basketball’s reordered reality of paid players and turnstile transfers.
Izzo? He’s stayed because he has nowhere else to go. This is who he is. He is the head basketball coach at Michigan State University. He’s worked in East Lansing for 42 years, arriving in 1983 as an assistant. What’s he gonna go do? Golf? He gets bored too easily and isn’t any good off the tee.
So he keeps coaching. That’s why whispers of retirement and succession plans are, compared to many other places, kept to a low hum around Michigan State.
Deep down, though? Everyone, including Izzo, knows what’s coming someday. It’s an unavoidable truth, one that shaped the contours of this entire weekend in Atlanta. How many more chances will the man reasonably have to take Michigan State back to the Final Four? It’s so hard to get there, even if Izzo did make it look so normal for all those years. Only 21 seasons separated those eight Final Four trips from 1999 through 2019, back when it was an unofficial tradition that every four-year player to enter the program would experience at least one Final Four in his career.
That’s why, at 3:41 p.m. local time on Sunday, as rain fell across Atlanta, Izzo arrived with his shoulders pushed up and his jaw clenched tight. He heard cheers from some Spartans fans lining Centennial Olympic Park Drive, looking down at the loading dock. He was so tense he could barely muster a nod up to those fans. Walking past, when asked, “How are you feeling?” he extended a handshake and quietly murmured, “Eh, I’m good.”
He looked like hell, but a member of Michigan State support staff assured that Izzo, who has a nasty habit of ringing himself out to borderline unhealthy degrees, was in a good place. Kind of. By his standards.
The issue with facing Auburn was an obvious one — that the South Region’s top seed is possibly the best team in the country. Bruce Pearl tried Saturday to concoct an alternate reality that presented his Tigers as the darkhorse, but not a single person alive is known to have believed him. In truth, Pearl’s theory was based more so in historical context. Michigan State basketball is written about in volumes. Auburn basketball can fill a small pamphlet.
As for the coaching matchup, Izzo entered this weekend having not only won eight Elite Eight games in his career, but having lost as many (two) as Pearl had appeared in over his 21-year head-coaching career. As a result, it was bizarre at times this weekend to hear Pearl speak of Izzo. He did so the way a curator does a great exhibit. But Pearl, 65, is only five years younger than Izzo.
A Michigan State upset would have required high-level shot-making and some Herculean defense on Broome. The game began in a sweep of noise as Izzo leaned over, resting his hands on his knees.
By 5:21 p.m., he could no longer watch. Pressing his eyes closed, Izzo turned his back to the floor and held a long stare up toward the rafters. Auburn was being Auburn while Michigan State was being a team that, in one doom-laden possession, managed to take and miss four open shots. Seeing Broome hit a 3 and the Auburn lead balloon to 23-8, Izzo called a timeout.
Michigan State shot just 34.4 percent from the field against Auburn. (Alex Slitz / Getty Images)
By 6:35 p.m., Izzo’s hands were atop his head, clenching fistfuls of hair. The deficit narrowed, the Spartans couldn’t manage to cut it down five or six. They never made Auburn have to consider its mortality. Even as Broome left the game with an elbow injury, the Tigers still refused to budge.
At 7:24 p.m., Izzo walked down the tunnel, staring down at his shoes. A fan yelled, “Thank you, Coach!” He lifted a hand in half-wave and turned left at the end of the hall, disappearing in the locker room.
In the postgame news conference, Izzo held a crumpled box score and squinted, making out each line, raising his eyebrows high above his readers. So many parts of the plan worked — limiting Auburn’s fleet of hocus-pocus guards, grabbing some offensive rebounds and limiting turnovers. Other parts didn’t. It’s hard to win when shots don’t go in, and Michigan State airmailed countless perimeter heaves and struggled against Auburn’s interior length. The differences were a 17-0 first-half Auburn run and Broome proving unstoppable. Izzo pulled off his glasses, leaned back, and put his hand upon the back of outgoing senior Jaden Akins.
“In some locker rooms people are bitching and complaining, and there are some locker rooms where people are crying and hugging,” Izzo said. “It was a crying and hugging locker room tonight, and that means we had something special.”
“I love this group of guys more than anything”
Jaxon Kohler spoke on the Spartans attitude while trailing 💚#MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/hzuTn43E73
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 31, 2025
Izzo walked off the media room stage and stepped behind a long black curtain lining the side of the room. He pulled open a meeting room door and joined his assistant coaches. They sat together for a while before a door opened and Michigan State’s swarm of traveling local media was invited in to speak with Izzo.
Twenty-two media members immediately jammed into a room that was low on air.
A program staffer said Izzo would talk for 10 minutes. It was 8:09 p.m.
Izzo covered it all. He said Michigan State simply panicked a little during Auburn’s early blitz. He said, “Maybe the season got long and the pressure got bigger.” He said months ago he worried this year might snap the Spartans’ streak of consecutive NCAA Tournaments (now 27). He said that they instead won the Big Ten by three games is a testament to a team that was connected off the court and uncompromising on it. He said this particular team was so likable that it “restored my faith in humanity.”
Twenty-five minutes later, Izzo wrapped up with reporters and shook some hands.
Then came the walk to that bus.
For a man who has forever seemed locked in some endless fight against borrowed time, Izzo took things slow. He wanted to say that this particular Michigan State team came around at the time he needed most. He admitted, yes, in the past six or seven years, he’s wondered occasionally if he’d be better off walking away. No, he never seriously considered retiring, but it’s only natural to wonder sometimes. It’s hard to be one of the last ones standing.
It’s just nice to know, he said, that he’s not standing still.
“I do know this, for sure — however many years I had left before this, you can add one or two more on top that,” Izzo said, looking over to a bus waiting for him to board. “All because of this team, these guys and this season.”
(Top photo: Alex Slitz / Getty Images)
