Michigan State Basketball: Tom Izzo had best career coaching performance in 2018-19

On Monday, the Big Ten named Matt Painter Coach of the Year, but Michigan State basketball’s Tom Izzo was robbed after the coaching job he’s done.

One could argue that the 2018-19 Michigan State basketball team had no business winning a Big Ten title after losing a couple of lottery picks in the offseason, a leader like Tum Tum Nairn and Josh Langford in late-December followed by Nick Ward with three weeks remaining and a deadlock atop the conference standings.

Every team has attrition, so losing Miles Bridges, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Tum Tum are not special cases and it was clear from the get-go that this Michigan State team had the perfect chemistry.

Contention was not out of the realm of possibility as long as everyone remained healthy.

Then Langford went down and was ruled out for the year, Matt McQuaid missed a couple of games and Kyle Ahrens has dealt with the back of an 80-year-old man all season, sitting out some contests as well. The chances for a title looked slim and then Ward suffered a hairline fracture in his hand with three weeks to go in the regular season.

No chance at a title, right?

Wrong.

Xavier Tillman stepped up, the seniors became even better leaders and Ward learned from the bench during the injury. Oh yeah, and Tom Izzo pulled off one of the best coaching jobs of his entire career — I’d go as far as saying it was the best coaching performance.

Sure, he’s had years with Drew Neitzel leading the way for a group of lesser-known players and he’s still made the tournament, but losing four starters — three for a majority of the season — from last year’s 30-5 team that won the Big Ten and still sharing the title and beating Michigan twice, Wisconsin on the road, Purdue, Iowa twice, Maryland, Texas, at Florida and Ohio State twice was unbelievably impressive.

Doing this all while basically not having a college-ready backup point guard (yes, Foster Loyer has work to do) and playing 6-7 deep at the end of the regular season was miracle-like.

Izzo is a Hall of Fame coach, after all, so going 25-6 after the regular season, earning the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament and sitting in line to earn a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament — a better seed than a year ago — shouldn’t be a crazy thought.

But the adversity this team faced with injuries, riding Cassius Winston for 35-40 minutes per game and having a few freshmen thrust into roles early was overcome, and then some.

Izzo didn’t win the Big Ten Coach of the Year award, surprisingly, but he’s still in the hunt for Naismith Coach of the Year and should be seriously considered as he’s done more with less this season than ever before in his lengthy career.