EAST LANSING – The sting of a Big Ten Tournament loss fades fast when the next step arrives so quickly.
For Jaxon Kohler and Carson Cooper, that means one final run in the NCAA Tournament to close out their time with Michigan State basketball. And one more chance to give coach Tom Izzo another deep run into March Madness.
“Although there is a certain pressure of last one and done, we treat this as the same way we treated the last four years,” Kohler said Sunday, March 15. “This is the most important stretch for us.”
Next stop: Buffalo. Next opponent: Bison.
Next mission: Survive and advance. Next loss: Go home and your season is over.
The eighth-ranked Spartans (25-7) begin their final journey in upstate New York on Thursday when they open play as the 3-seed in the East region against 14-seed North Dakota State (27-7). Tipoff at KeyBank Center is 4:05 p.m. (TNT) in Izzo’s 28th straight NCAA tournament appearance, which ties the record for the longest streak in NCAA history.
The ultimate goals will be to advance to the Sweet 16 of a loaded bracket and then get to Indianapolis for what would be Izzo’s ninth Final Four. But first things first.
“Our focus better be on one thing, and that’s North Dakota State,” Izzo said on Selection Sunday after the bracket was revealed. “As we all know, we’ve been a part of a 15-2 (upset), so I have apprehension. … We’ll make sure they’re focused. If that did happen, that’s personally the coach’s fault.
“You gotta make sure it doesn’t happen.”
Both Kohler and Cooper admitted that attentiveness was lacking Friday in Chicago, where MSU was one-and-done with an 88-84 loss to UCLA in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals. That defeat, coupled with Purdue’s surge to beating Michigan in the final on Sunday ended up being the ultimate reason why the Boilermakers leaped the Spartans for a 2-seed, selection committee chairman Keith Gill said later that night.
Cooper felt like the quick exit against the Bruins happened because the Spartans got caught peeking a few days down the line for a rematch that never materialized.
“We can’t look past anybody,” the senior center from Jackson said Sunday. “Maybe in the Big Ten Tournament, I think one of the things that we might have done is look too far ahead. Especially losing to Michigan [March 8 in the regular-season finale], we were thinking we wanted to meet these guys again. We weren’t putting all of our eggs in one basket about the game that we had in front of us.
“So I think for now, [in the NCAA] Tournament, that’s gonna be to the Nth degree, because you’re gonna be playing against more desperate teams. Everybody’s more desperate now, everybody’s good. It’s really not looking ahead and understanding your first weekend, winning that first game and winning that second game has gotta be the most important thing on our plate.”
They’ll face a Bison team that has won 17 of its past 19 games and captured both the Summit League regular season and postseason tournament titles. NDSU takes and makes 3-pointers at a high volume, something MSU’s defense has struggled with the past few weeks: Its past five opponents have shot 43.3% (55-for-127) and all made 10-or-more 3s.
“Michigan State. Tom Izzo. Just the utmost respect,” Bison coach David Richman told the Fargo Forum on Sunday night. “Growing up in this area, I’ve always been a Big Ten guy. So if you’re a Big Ten guy, you understand the physical brand of basketball, the rebounding that is Michigan State and Tom Izzo.”
Even though the Spartans’ engine revs with first-team All-Big Ten point guard and leading scorer Jeremy Fears Jr., that physicality Izzo’s teams are known for starts with the two seniors in the frontcourt. Fears, a redshirt sophomore point guard, averages 15.7 points and leads the nation at 9.2 assists per game in large part because both Kohler (12.7 points/nine rebounds) and Cooper (10.8/7.1) have established both their scoring and rebounding presence in the paint.
Those three, along with fellow captain and junior forward Coen Carr, were key reasons why the Spartans advanced to Izzo’s 11th Elite Eight last season before falling to Auburn. And the two seniors understand their next loss means the end of their college careers.
That’s the motivation to amplify their intensity and lock in to make sure the lapses they suffered against UCLA won’t happen again Thursday and beyond.
“We have to make sure that we really understand the sense of urgency from the other team,” Kohler said. “Because if we underestimate that in any way, they can get the jump on us. We have to make sure that when we enter the building that the other team can sense we want it more than them.”
It’s something Izzo understands because he has been there many times over, including getting to the Final Four as an underdog 7-seed in 2015, then getting bounced as a 2-seed the following year by 15-seed Middle Tennessee State in the first round.
He saw Purdue in 2023 become the first 1-seed to ever get knocked out by a 16-seed.
Kohler and Cooper were freshmen on that MSU team which, along with the Boilermakers, opened play in Columbus, Ohio, that year. Those Spartans advanced to the Sweet 16 as a 7-seed before losing to Kansas State in overtime.
This team can’t afford think about potential matchups against 2-seed Connecticut and 1-seed Duke in the second weekend in Washington. That opportunity might not arrive if it has a repeat of Chicago.
“There’s gotta be 100% focus, because it’s just the way it is,” Izzo said. “It was proven [three] years ago that a 1 can lose to a 16. The parity is so much different now … so you have to focus on the first team. And that’s what we’ll do.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tom Izzo’s March Madness message to Michigan State basketball is clear
Reporting by Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
