FratHouseSports

Tom Izzo may be a midget, but he is the man. Over 1,800 people came out to see him preform in a broadway type musical based on his life earlier this week.

The hour long musical took fans from a crucial free throw he missed with three seconds to go in a high school basketball game to the six Final Fours he’s experienced at Michigan State…and it was all for a good cause, it helped raised money for arts education programming in West Michigan and MSU student scholarships.

Video Of The Performance Below…

After working with Nike for 2 years here are Michigan States new jerseys. We only have photos of the basketball and football jerseys, but the Spartans re-did the uniforms for all 25 of their sports teams and unveiled them today at a press conference.

The only real changes to the basketball jerseys from the old ones is that they are a little bit darker green and it has “Spartans” on the front instead of “State”.

On one of the crucial plays of the Michigan State vs Butler game Michigan State’s Draymon Green drove to the basket with 10 seconds to go, shot, and air balled thanks to some great “defense” by Hayward. Butler of course went on to win and fans were left either saying Green was fouled or it was a great no call by the ref and I wasn’t worried about it at the time because my money was on Butler.

But now that the game is over and I’ve collected my winnings, as it turns out Green was fouled according to SI’s Seth Davis. Here is the video evidence.

No Izzo is not going to Oregon, they haven’t even contacted him about the job…at least not yet. Once his season is over we’ll see if he is strong enough to resist all the money that Nike’s Phil Knight is sure to throw at him. The report coming out of Oregon is that, Oregon is prepared to make him the highest paid college basketball coach in America.

A title currently held by John Calipari who gets paid just over $3.8 million a year. So lets supposed Oregon offers Izzo $4 million a year, $1 million more than his current salary…will that be enough to get him to leave East Lansing for Eugene? It would be for me.

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(1) Butler - Sure they might be the only “mid-major” left in the tournament, but at this time of year there are no such things as mid-majors. The first thing they’ve got going for them is that they are going to be playing in their home state, so they’ll have the crowd behind them. But what makes them the most dangerous team is that they’re on a 24 game winning streak, they haven’t lost since before Christmas.

(2) Duke –  They say defense wins championships, well we say it’s the offense and nobody left in the Final Four puts the ball in the hoop more than the Blue Devils. Jon Scheyer has finally broken out of his slump the past 2 games and Nolan Smith is playing like an All-American. As much as I hate to say it, Dukes looking real good.

(3) Michigan State – This team and Tom Izzo where here last year. They know what to expect and they know what it takes to get it done. After losing like they did last year in the Final Four, nobody is going to be as hungry and the Spartans for the win.

(4) West Virginia – They come into the Final Four limping. They still don’t have a point guard, we doubt they can put on a 3 point shooting display like they did during the first half against Kentucky, and we know Duke is not going to shoot that poorly from the foul line. The Mountaineers are the least dangerous team.

Save the Date: Saturday April 3rd
Game One: 6:07 pm EST - (5) Michigan State vs (5) Butler
Game Two: 8:47 pm EST – (1) Duke vs (2) West Virginia

After all the games we are finally down to our Final Four. I wonder how many people out there had these four teams picked? You’ve got the number five seed Butler Bulldogs repping the Horizon League at 32-4. Then there’s the ACC’s Duke Blue Devils, the only number one seed to make it to the Final Four with a 33-5 record. Next we got the battle tested 28-8 Michigan State Spartans of the Big 10, who are limping into the last round. And finally the lone Big East team, the West Virginia Mountaineers coming in at 31-6.

Michigan State – Starting guard Kalin Lucas ruptured his Achilles’ and will be out for 4-6 months. His replacement, Korie Lucious, the hero that hit the last second game winning 3 pointer against Maryland. A decent player that’s been averaging just over 20 minutes a game, but only 5 points compared to Lucas’s 15. Still he should be more athletic than Northern Iowa’s guards so besides Kalin’s leadership the Spartans shouldn’t miss a beat.

West Virginia – Starting PG Darryl Bryant will miss the rest of the tourney with a broken bone in his foot. His replacement will be Joe Mazzulla who is nowhere near as good as Byrant (Mazzulla averages 2 pts, 2 ast, and 2 rbs compared to 9, 3, and 2 by Byrant). But the lack of production isn’t going to hurt the Mountaineers half as much as the fact that they’re now without a backup PG. A major problem when you’re going to be going up against the fastbreak offense and high pressure defense of Washington next game.

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