Michigan State Basketball: 3 takeaways from first-round win over Davidson

1. You can never count Tom Izzo out in March

Survive and advance. Michigan State has hammered that phrase into his teams over the years and he has also harped making it past the first weekend and he’d lead the team to the second and third weekends of the tourney. But beating Duke to advance to the Sweet 16 won’t be easy.

Michigan State improved to 23-12 on the season with a win over Davidson which was pretty much decided with a little over a minute left. The Wildcats made the final score much closer because of some big threes, but the Spartans made clutch free throws and did enough to ensure that those deep jumpers didn’t do them in.

The main takeaway from this one: don’t count Tom Izzo out in March.

Michigan State was down 56-51 and it almost felt like the game was getting away from Izzo, but he calmed his team down and they went on a 10-0 run to recapture the lead and never looked back. He had his team ready for Davidson and had the perfect plan down the stretch to put the game out of reach.

Izzo is a master at winning games in the NCAA Tournament and even when things looked grim against Davidson, his team stepped up. You just can’t count him out — ever.

We’ll see what he’s really made of when he sees Duke and Coach K on Sunday night.