Hlas: MSU has Valentine, Hawkeyes need extra heart

IOWA CITY — Under Tom Izzo, Michigan State has won 46 men's basketball NCAA tournament games since 1998.

That's good. Crazy-good.

It's also what the Hawkeyes and the rest of the Big Ten are up against year after year. It doesn't matter if January's Spartans are loaded with talent and togetherness or are a patchwork quilt. By March, they are as hard as winters in Iron Mountain, Mich., the Upper Peninsula town from where Izzo hails.

Izzo has guided MSU to seven Final Fours and 13 Sweet 16s. While almost all other Big Ten programs have had dips in that time, his teams methodically power their way through regular-season play with success, then muscle their way deep into the NCAAs.

'When you have players that come before you that sort of expect to make the tournament, expect to win when they get there, it's an attitude that I think permeates that program,' Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said. 'They have an uncanny ability to win close games.'

Here we are in 2016, and the Spartans are 16-1 and ranked fourth in the coaches' poll. That '1' came courtesy of Iowa on Dec. 29 in Carver-Hawkeye Arena, a sparkling 83-70 triumph by the Hawkeyes over what was then the No. 1 team in the polls.

The motivation for Michigan State to avenge that defeat only adds to what was a daunting challenge for Iowa (3-0 in the Big Ten) as it heads to MSU Thursday night to try to get the most-impressive road win in college basketball so far this season.

Why not this year, when McCaffery is starting four seniors and Iowa already has knocked off Purdue on the road? Why not this year, when Iowa forward Jarrod Uthoff has come from nowhere (in the national consciousness) to join Maryland's Melo Trimble and MSU's Denzel Valentine as Big Ten Player of the Year candidates?

Hey, the Spartans lost four home games last season before February turned into March and they again morphed into a Final Four team. So Breslin isn't impenetrable.

But the reality is, if the Hawkeyes find a way to win in East Lansing Thursday, jaws will drop all the way between the Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford presidential libraries. Playing a vengeance-minded, time-tested, premier opponent in a hostile environment isn't conducive to success.

'The most important thing is to not get rattled,' Uthoff said Tuesday.

'Just play with toughness. Don't get rattled.'

Each of Iowa's last 18 teams that visited Breslin got twisted, shaken and rattled, and all of them lost. Current Iowa players, however, were either part of just one of those defeats or none, since the Hawkeyes didn't play there in 2013 or 2015.

However, here's what they're up against Thursday:

● The team that leads the nation in rebounding margin, is second in field goal percentage defense, fourth in assists-to-turnovers ration, and sixth in scoring margin.

● Valentine, who didn't play in the game at Iowa because of a knee injury. This is a 6-foot-5 do-everything guy who had 29 points, 12 rebounds and 12 assists in a 79-73 win against current-No. 1 Kansas in Chicago.

● Izzo and bloodlust from the Izzone, which would find two losses against the same team in a two-week period about as acceptable as hugging Jim Harbaugh.

The trick for the Hawkeyes is to play a competitive game, come home with their psyches still intact, and proceed to the rest of their schedule.

But if they were to somehow escape with a victory? Iowa's best basketball win of this century is all it would be.

l Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@thegazette.com