Count me among those glad Tom Izzo is staying at Michigan State

Three months before Michigan State men's basketball team won the NCAA championship in 2000, I got a Monday-morning phone call at my office from Tom Izzo.

Two days before, the Spartans had tattooed a 75-53 victory on Iowa before a sellout crowd of 15,500 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Hearing the MSU coach identify himself on the phone, I immediately wondered what I had written (or what he had taken out of context) to upset him. I had never spoken with Izzo before the call.

"I know you guys always hear from coaches when you write something we don't like," Izzo said. "But Gus Ganakas (former MSU basketball coach and a long-time team broadcaster) flew home Sunday from the game. He saw your column and showed it to me."

Izzo then said he appreciated what I wrote about his program.

So he softened me up for the next 11 years. We're all just humans, and I respond to honey more than vinegar like everybody else.

But I've also had 11 years since then to watch him work, to see how he deals with everybody, to see if he's a phony or a closet hothead. All I've ever seen is a decent guy trying to do the best he can.

The column I wrote suggested that the MSU program, coming off its second-straight Big Ten title and a Final Four berth, was one first-year Iowa coach Steve Alford should model the Hawkeyes after.

For once in my life, I gave good advice. The Spartans' national-title that April came at the second of their six Final Four appearances under Izzo. I was sorry to see MSU end Northern Iowa's NCAA run this year in the Sweet 16 because the Panthers were such a fantastic story for us in Iowa. But at least they lost to someone who strikes me as  honorable.

College sports can always handle the departures of certain coaches to the pros. You know who they are. But the Izzos - the colleges need those guys. I was glad to hear he announced Tuesday that he's staying put.

Izzo's is the program, by the way, that Fran McCaffery's should strive to be.

Here's that aforementioned column, by the way:

IOWA CITY - This is the quest for the Iowa men's basketball program:

To play consistently stifling defense, to not be denied as rebounders, to seize the moments when fast-break chances present themselves, to be sound and purposeful, to have a roster 10-deep with players who can run and shoot and defend and be as tough as they are talented.

This is the quest for the Iowa men's basketball program:

To be Michigan State, circa 1998, 1999, and this year.

"Spartans 2000" isn't a bad sci-fi flick from a few decades ago, but it was wretched viewing all the same for the 15,500 in Carver-Hawkeye Arena Saturday night. Michigan State im posed its will, and the Hawkeyes wilted in a hurry.

Iowa's players change, its coaches change, its systems change. But its results against the two-time defending Big Ten champs remain the same. MSU's 75-53 win Saturday was its sixth in a row over the  Hawks. Its last three trips to Carver have produced victories of 21, 14, and now 22 points.

The blowout did give Hawk fans a good excuse to engage in one of their favorite pastimes, which is streaming toward the exits before game's end.

Not that Iowa is alone in getting sand kicked in its face by these brutes from East Lansing. The Spartans own 20 consecutive triumphs over Big Ten foes. That kind of streak comes along about once a quarter-century.

"That speaks volumes about their coaching staff and their players," Iowa Coach Steve Alford said. "That's an incredible feat to be able to do that."

Tom Izzo inherited a program from Jud Heathcote that was pretty salty to begin with, and has created a monster by Big Ten standards. When you can play 13 games without All-America point guard Mateen Cleaves and still be ranked 11th in the nation, you have yourself a basketball team.

Cleaves played for the second time this season, but was a sideman to smooth senior forward Morris Peterson, who poured in 29 points.

Like solid starting guard Charlie Bell, Cleaves and Peterson are from Flint, Mich. Flint kids used to like our state. Barry Stevens and Jeff Grayer were royalty at Iowa State, and Roy Marble was no slouch for Iowa.

Izzo lassoed Flint's best a few years ago. It must be nice to build a Big Ten dynasty without having to leave your own area code for too many parts. However, talent doesn't just fall into your lap and winning isn't a matter of simply showing up. Izzo 's teams take it to you.

That league winning streak, Peterson said, comes from "playing hard, playing blue-collar."

It's being ready to go from the opening tip, which Big Mo was. The first of Peterson's four first-half 3-pointers gave MSU an 11-0 lead four minutes into the game.

"It's just a good shooting gym for me," Peterson said. It's nice someone can say that.

The Hawks shot 28.1 percent from the field, which will get you swatted down by lots of

Division I mosquitoes, let alone a club that won the 1999 Big Ten regular-season and tournament titles and then reached the Final Four.

Such misfiring - coupled with another dismal night at the foul line (18-of-33) will get you whipped even when your opponent makes 26 turnovers. If you had known that MSU would have 26 turnovers and Iowa just 14, you wouldn't have predicted a 22-point Spartan win.

But those old standbys like defense, rebounding and making use of fast-break situations can keep a team afloat even if its fingers are coated in butter.

Izzo doesn't gloat. He says that of those 20 straight Big Ten wins, only two matter right now. Those, of course, are the ones that have put the Spartans in their old, familiar place at the top of the conference.

But that's a streak that makes even Izzo pause to admire.

"I think it's a great credit to our players to have been able to maintain the focus to do something in such a great conference that we're in."

There's some good news for Iowa. It doesn't play Michigan State again this regular-season. The bad news is that the Hawks' next three games are at Minnesota, Penn State and Indiana.

"We're gonna go through a season here where we're gonna learn a lot of lessons," Alford said.

The Hawks had some excellent teachers Saturday night.