{"id":16749,"date":"2024-03-22T14:01:23","date_gmt":"2024-03-22T18:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=16749"},"modified":"2024-03-22T14:01:23","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T18:01:23","slug":"tom-izzo-has-ncaa-tournament-record-for-wins-as-a-lower-seed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=16749","title":{"rendered":"Tom Izzo has NCAA Tournament record for wins as a lower seed"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Michigan State basketball dominated Mississippi State from start to finish on Thursday. Tom Izzo extends a tourney record.<\/h2>\n<p>Let me know if you\u2019ve heard this before. Tom Izzo wins an NCAA Tournament game with the lower-seeded team. That\u2019s exactly what the Spartans did on Thursday when the <a href=\"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/michigan-state-basketball-takeaways-win-mississippi-state\/\">9-seed Spartans dominated 8-seed Mississippi State 69-51<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This is not a surprise for MSU fans, it actually is just more of the norm and what\u2019s expected in East Lansing.<\/p>\n<h3>Most wins as lower-seeded team<\/h3>\n<p>The win over Mississippi State was the 17th NCAA Tournament win for Tom Izzo as the lower-seeded team. This is the most out of any coach in the history of the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Tom Izzo today extended his NCAA tournament record with a 17th victory as a lower-seeded team. MSU improved to 11-1 all-time against SEC opponents, and Izzo is 9-0 against SEC foes. (1\/2)<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Chris Solari (@chrissolari) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/chrissolari\/status\/1770898634705457348?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 21, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>There are many reasons Izzo is Mr. March, but this may be the biggest of them all. March Madness is full of upsets, and the Spartans have contributed to that more than anyone else.<\/p>\n<p>Sure Michigan State is never pulling off the massive upsets we see, like 14-seed Oakland beating 3-seed Kentucky Thursday night (<a href=\"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/former-spartan-rocket-watts-punches-ticket-to-the-ncaa-tournament\/\">shoutout Rocket Watts<\/a>), but that doesn\u2019t mean these 17 upsets aren\u2019t meaningful. Especially considering how many deep runs Izzo\u2019s made as a low seed. Tom\u2019s made the Final Four as a 5-seed twice and a 7-seed once. Those seeds just don\u2019t make it that far, so I\u2019d honestly put those runs on the level as a 14 vs. 3 upset like we saw Thursday.<\/p>\n<h3>Greatest first game from a lower-seeded MSU team<\/h3>\n<p>During the postgame press conference, Izzo went as far to say \u201cI thought this was one of the better first game performances of a lower-seeded (Michigan State) team.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cI thought this was one of the better first game performances of a lower seeded (Mich St) team\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He adds analysis of Hubbard <\/p>\n<p>\u201cwhen Hubbard gets going it\u2019s scary \u2014 I\u2019ve seen him torture teams that I have a lot of respect for \u201c<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Spartans Illustrated (@SpartansRivals) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SpartansRivals\/status\/1770881165307658607?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 21, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s definitely a lot of truth to this as Michigan State dominated the Bulldogs the entire game. MSU started out hot and got out to a 20-8 lead and never looked back. They were locked in defensively all game and didn\u2019t have many rough offensive stretches either. They even hit a lot of threes against the No. 7 ranked 3-point defense in the country as well.<\/p>\n<p>The Spartans will have another chance to add to Izzo\u2019s lower-seeded win total on Saturday. Michigan State takes on 1-seed North Carolina with a chance to make its second consecutive Sweet 16. A win in this game would be one of the greatest in Izzo\u2019s tenure in my opinion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tom Izzo just wins in March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":16439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[190,189,504,211],"class_list":["post-16749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","tag-michigan-state-basketball","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-news","tag-tom-izzo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}