Michigan State's Tom Izzo breaks record for consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances
East Lansing, Mich. – With Michigan State being named the No. 7 seed in the East Region of the 2023 NCAA Tournament bracket Sunday evening, head coach Tom Izzo has broken Mike Krzyzewski’s record of consecutive tournament appearances by a Division I coach, with 25.
Izzo, who was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016, won the NCAA Championship in 2000. He’s led the Spartans to eight Final Fours, 10 Elite Eights and 14 Sweet Sixteens over his 28-year tenure as Michigan State’s head coach.
“It means the world to me,” Izzo said of the record. “It means I had a lot of good players. It means I had a lot of good staff. It means I had a lot of good fans. You don’t win games over a period of time because of what you do, you win games because there’s a collection of people that are all doing their jobs.”
Izzo’s record in NCAA Tournament games is 53-23. He first made the NCAA Tournament in 1998, his third year as head coach at Michigan State. That year, the Spartans made the Sweet Sixteen, eventually losing to No. 1-seeded North Carolina.
Michigan State made the Final Four in each of the next three seasons.
Had the 2020 NCAA Tournament been played, Izzo’s tournament streak would have likely been at 26 years this season.
Krzyzewski spent 47 years as Duke’s head coach before retiring in 2022. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001. He is the NCAA’s all-time winningest coach, boasting a 1,202-368 career win-loss record.
Krzyzewski’s previous record of 24 consecutive NCAA Tournament berths began in 1996.
This season, Michigan State finished with a 19-12 overall record and an 11-8 record in the Big Ten. The Spartans earned a No. 4 seed in this year’s Big Ten Tournament, but lost to an upstart Ohio State team, 68-58, in the quarterfinals on Friday.
Prior to that, Michigan State had won five of its previous seven games. The Spartans’ offense caught fire over the last five games of the regular season, averaging 86.8 points per game over that stretch.
Izzo will look to lead Michigan State to its first second-weekend appearance since 2019, when the Spartans made the Final Four by beating Krzyzewski’s No. 1-seeded Duke team, 68-67, in the Elite Eight.
“(It means) probably everything,” Izzo said of the record. “Probably more than any other thing because it means you’ve had a group of people that have bought into a system, and you as the head coach have maintained some sense of consistency over a long time.
“25 years is a long time, but I still hope the best is yet to come.”
