A little word of advice for any team that has road game against Michigan State this year — ignore the student section.
On Friday night, No. 2 Michigan State nearly suffered an unexpected loss to Columbia. The Spartans found themselves trying to protect a two-point lead late in the second half when they received a major boost from their student section, better known as the Izzone. On back-to-back Columbia possessions, the Michigan State students forced turnovers by intentionally mistiming their shot clock countdown to dupe the opposition.
The genius of it is that the Spartans fans mix it up. Sometimes, they starting counting down and force an early shot by getting to zero when there are actually still a few seconds remaining on the clock. Other times, they fool opponents into thinking there is more time left on the clock by starting the countdown a few seconds late.
“They’re the best-coached fans I’ve ever seen,” Columbia coach Kyle Smith said after the game, via MLive.com’s Diamond Leung. “They duped us. They duped us on the backwards count or whatever. I think my one guy had a brain freeze because he was right in front of me, and there was like four (seconds) on the clock, and I’m like, ‘Take a look.’”
Michigan state ended up winning the game 62-53, and Tom Izzo felt that the students deserved more credit than the players.
“The Izzone was a lot more aggressive than the players on the floor, so I thought they did a hell of a job tonight,” the Spartans coach said. “It’s funny when that happened I almost got up and thanked them, but I thought didn’t want to embarrass anybody. I’ve always said that if we could get that group back to where they win a couple games for us…tonight it might have been one of them.”
Players are taught to block out crowd noise, but we know that is easier said than done. Kudos to the Michigan State student section for taking the concept of home court advantage to the next level.
H/T The Dagger
As good of a program as Michigan State is, you figure they wouldn’t need much help to take care of the second place team from the WAC — one that went 22-12 in the regular season. That wasn’t the case on Friday night when Michigan State never held more than a four point lead in the final 10 minutes of their game with New Mexico State. Things were interesting down the stretch with the Spartans pulling it out 70-67. The outcome would have been more in question had Michigan State not received favorable and surprising calls from the refs. The foul disparity over the final seven minutes in the game was 7-3 in favor of Michigan State. Several of the calls on New Mexico State were ticky-tacky hand checking fouls including the two called on Jahmar Young that fouled him out of the game. Any coincidence Young is New Mexico State’s highest scorer? Probably not. 
When Michigan State won its Elite Eight matchup on Sunday against Louisville, coach Tom Izzo said that he hoped the team’s victory would be a glimmer of hope in what’s been a difficult year for the state. He said he hoped the fans could rally around the success of the team to restore some happiness and pride in the community. It makes you think that the Final Four being held in Detroit couldn’t be happening at a better time and that it was almost imperative for the Spartans to make it to Ford Field. With the condition of the automotive industry, the state will now receive a significant boost in the form of tourism for the upcoming weekend. Additionally, 
In case you missed it over the weekend, Michigan State 
