Izzo, bah!

Every year, I hear a bunch of commentary to the effect that Tom Izzo is the best, the smartest, the wisest coach (except, of course, for Coach K) in all of college athletics. And every year Michigan State pulls a bunch of upsets and gets to the Final Four. And then they lose.

I have no doubt that Izzo is a great coach -- he has certainly beaten UK enough times. But he never, ever seems to win a game that I actually want him to win. He usually gets blown out by UNC whenever he plays them. He actually beat Duke in the 2005 tournament -- which I did like -- but then went on to beat UK, before getting blown out by UNC.

Anyway, I really wanted Michigan State to beat UConn in the first semi-final of the Maui Classic. That way, if UK wins, we would get to play MSU in the final -- a huge game against the number 2 team in the country. And if we lost, we would avoid MSU in the third-place game, thereby giving us a better chance of avoiding back-to-back losses. So naturally Team Izzo falls flat on its face, losing to UConn 67-70. Now UK has to win this game against Washington, or we will have to play Team Izzo tomorrow in a third-place game -- and the Izzos will be out for blood in that game.