Fear of failure fuels fire for success in Michigan State coach Tom Izzo

Michigan State coach Tom Izzo is so passionate about coaching he vividly recalls losses from eight years ago. Damian Strohmeyer/SI

Tom Izzo is in his office, talking about how the season almost fell apart.

First, his freshman wing made a game-winning shot against Wisconsin, but officials decided it came after the buzzer.

"A good call," Izzo admits. "But the replay the next day (showed) there should have been another second on the clock," Izzo said. "If I woulda ..."

His voice trails off, and it seemed like he was done talking. But there is more pain to share: the Spartans went to Minnesota, he says, and their star point guard pulled a muscle in his back in the morning shootaround. A few weeks later, they went to Illinois and the point guard got a concussion and had to skip the Northwestern game, which Michigan State lost.

Izzo sounded frustrated and disappointed. OK, fine. All coaches get frustrated and disappointed sometimes.

But Izzo was bemoaning a sequence of events from eight years ago.

Is this normal? Is it normal for a man who has coached his teams to five Final Fours to sit in his office in 2010 and recite, from memory, everything that went wrong in a 2002 season that was really not all that bad anyway?

Izzo thought for a moment.

"Boy, that's a damn good question," Izzo said. "I guess that's how much it bothers me."

*****

This month, for the 13th consecutive March, Tom Izzo will lead Michigan State into the NCAA tournament. The sheer impressiveness of this achievement means that it does not seem like news. Of course the Spartans will make the tournament again. They always do.

And yet: North Carolina won't be there this year. Neither will Connecticut or UCLA, which has won more championships than any other school.

In popular perception, Michigan State is always contending and always doing it the same way: with tenacious defense and great rebounding and super coaching from Izzo. Michigan State is considered a model of stability, the program that is always the same, always there.

Izzo does not look at it that way. Not exactly. The way Izzo sees it, the program could have fallen apart at any moment in the past 13 years, and it never has.

"People ask me: 'What do you fear? What do you worry about?' " Izzo said. "That's what I fear. I've seen UConn, even Georgetown for a while there, even Syracuse, Florida ... I've seen all those teams (slip). And once you go down, it's hard to go back up."

The first time Izzo made the Final Four, in 1999, everybody he'd ever met told him, "Now you've made it." Izzo's response was always the same: Made it? Talk to me 10 years from now.

Eleven years have passed. Michigan State has made four more Final Fours, giving Izzo the best March track record in the country. Even now, he worries. Three years ago, he had one of his least talented teams, and all season long there was an undercurrent of desperation. Just keep that tournament streak alive. That's all that matters. Michigan State snuck into the tournament as a nine seed, and on Selection Sunday, Izzo was filled with relief. We survived.

In the tournament, Izzo will joke with the TV people, smile under the lights of press conferences, give an extra few minutes to reporters he's never met. He will seem like the steadiest, securest person in the room. Most people won't realize how much he tortures himself. He remembers every near-miss, every almost-championship, every injury that kept a good season from being great.

"Those things eat me away," Izzo said. "It's like making money: You never think you have enough. If you ask me: 'Do you ever sit down and really think about it?' No. That's the shame of the job. You never really enjoy it."

He won't let himself enjoy it. If he loosens his grip on his program, he might look down and realize it's gone. A lot of coaches, especially the most famous ones, say they don't read newspapers or check what's on the Internet. Izzo admits he reads and listens to everything.

At the end of one regular season, he got heat for ... well, it doesn't really matter why anymore. What matters is Izzo's response: "It pissed me off so bad I called up a radio show myself. I just wanted to tell the people to go (bleep) themselves."

Izzo's complaining, his bitching, his angst -- it has caused more than a few eyes to roll in East Lansing. Does Bill Self ever complain that his home crowds are not as loud as they used to be? Does Ben Howland? Izzo does, every year.

But this is who he is. If you want one of the best coaches of his generation, you have to accept the whole package. If you want Roy Williams, you live with the corniness and the end-of-season tears. If you want Mike Krzyzewski, you must grant him total control of his fiefdom. And if you want Izzo, you get the angst.