Looks like I should have gone back in the thread and found the list someone posted of accolades comparing the two. I don’t remember state winning that many big ten tourneys.
I also am completely surprised state only had one less win in the big dance. I remember seeing a graphic of most wins or most second weekends one of the two and Michigan was right at the top either tied with a couple others or just behind. I don’t remember seeing state on it.
Foot in mouth. Agreed then, gotta give the munchkin his due. The only argument would then be development or doing more with less But I can’t say that overtakes straight winning.
I will say though I still wouldn’t trade our decade for theirs due to the two finals runs.
I think our decade was a ton of fun given we did not have the burden of high expectations very often, whereas for them there were several teams that didn’t live up to the hype. We also closed the gap with that hated rival, whereas for them that’s not a good thing.
But that’s a different question than who is the coach of the decade. It is to Izzo’s credit that expectations were high, and Beilein deserves some blame for the program spinning its wheels just a bit for a while there until he overhauled the staff and adopted the defensive-coordinator approach. I genuinely believe that Beilein was the better coach in so many ways, and that some of Izzo’s success came in spite of his own ideas about how to get there. But the bottom line there isn’t arguable, IMO. Izzo I think is the clear choice for coach of the decade, even if he left more wins on the table than he should have.
Well, we “spun our wheels” when we lost Caris Levert and Derrick Walton to season-ending injuries in 2015, and then Levert again in 2016. Not to mention losing McGary in 2014, when frankly that might have made us the best team in the country. I can’t recall MSU ever losing any stars for the season, unless you want to call Josh Langford a star.
Well he might have been a star if he’d gone to Michigan, but Beilein took a different approach to recruiting than most elite coaches would have, which is part of my point there. Two years after a finals appearance you hope to have enjoyed a recruiting bump and to be avoiding playing walkons when an injury bug hits.
Yeah, nobody expected Dakich or Lonergan to ever see the court, except in blowouts.
Also regarding those recruiting classes, Austin Hatch was in that mix too (2013, IIRC). He wasn’t a top-100 player but there was some expectation that he’d be a guy to provide depth behind LeVert at one point in time.