Michigan State football play-by-play commentator George Blaha was recently inducted into the James Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame for his contributions and works with the Detroit Pistons as their play-by-play commentator. As a way to show support to Blaha from the Spartan base, Michigan State Athletics released a quick, one-minute video thanking Blaha for his service towards the Spartans during his many years in the booth.<\/p>\n
One of the featured Spartan representatives in the video, Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo, stated that he and Blaha “got years to go yet” until they retire, indicating that Izzo’s apparent retirement date is set years in advance to today’s current date.<\/p>\n
Many within the Spartan fanbase have speculated when the Spartans glorified figure would step down as head of the men’s basketball program. From 2020-2023, the green and white inside the Breslin Center seemed stagnant, a program of the past with ‘mediocre seasons’ in many Spartan fans eyes.<\/p>\n
However, with key recruitments such as freshman Jase Richardson, transfers Frankie Fidler and Szymon Zapala, and former Michigan assistant coach Saddi Washington, the Spartans turned a corner, and finished with a 30-7 record, only losing to the No. 1 team in the entire country in the elite eight of the March Madness tournament.<\/p>\n
This past season not only turned the tide of the program itself, but the confidence that Izzo and his staff could in fact compete in today’s modern game. Izzo then went a step further, once again dipping his feet into the ocean that is today’s transfer portal and securing three commitments from key players that Izzo expects to contribute right away.<\/p>\n
All this and more have reinforced the idea that Izzo is here to stay, and win. Izzo’s commitment to adapt to a certain level is restoring confidence that the basketball staff has an obligation to remaining true to the game, while also allowing new strategies to build their program, their way.<\/p>\n
The video on Blaha once again shows that Izzo is committed to Michigan State and competing at a high level for the rest of his career. Izzo only knows when it is time to hang up the shoes, but it certainly is not right now, or a year down the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tom Izzo may have some years left still.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1141,"featured_media":20945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[915,59,190,189,211],"class_list":["post-21890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","tag-college-basketball","tag-featured","tag-michigan-state-basketball","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-tom-izzo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21890","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\/1141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}