Burgos: Izzo currently best coach in college basketball

The NCAA tournament has been more unpredictable than usual this year.

As a result, most… The NCAA tournament has been more unpredictable than usual this year.

As a result, most people didn’t come within a whiff of picking the Final Four teams correctly. In fact, mega-media personalities/experts didn’t either — the likes of Dick Vitale (ESPN), George Dohrmann (Sports Illustrated) and Jason King (Yahoo! Sports) didn’t pick even one team right.

But in a year in which mid-major Butler provided the tournament’s latest Cinderella rendition and West Virginia made its first Final Four since Jerry West walked campus in Morgantown, someone all too familiar to the biggest stage in college hoops made an even bigger splash that no one saw coming.

Take this to the bank and cash it: Tom Izzo is the best coach in college basketball right now, and his 2010 Michigan State Spartans are the latest reminder why.

Izzo has one NCAA Men’s Division I National Championship to his name, which came in 2000. That’s exactly two less than Duke’s Head Coach, if it’s not Royal Highness, Mike Krzyzewski, whose last Tournament triumph came in 2001. Coach K has Duke in its 11th Final Four during his tenure, which makes him another obvious candidate to claim coaching supremacy.

But the argument here is right now and, right now, Izzo does the best job of coaching his players and is most instrumental in his team’s success. Consider the following: First, with this year’s appearance, Izzo has Michigan State in its second consecutive Final Four and its sixth in the past 12 years. Only two other coaches in the history of the NCAA Tournament have done that before: John Wooden (who did it with Bill Walton and Lew Alcindor) and Krzyzewski himself (who did it with Christian Laettner and slew of other McDonald’s All-Americans).

What’s more, this year, Izzo’s team was a No. 5 seed, in the same bracket as overall No. 1 seed Kansas and the No. 2 seed Ohio State, led by Evan Turner. Also, the Spartans’ best player, Kalin Lucas, went down with an ankle injury in the second round against Maryland, but Izzo still has his squad in Indianapolis this weekend.

It isn’t because Izzo is one of the best coaches in history, like Wooden and Coach K can claim. It’s far simpler than that.

Izzo knows how to utilize talent. He is an X’s and O’s guy who assesses what he has and does the best job possible with what’s available. Think about it: in the Big Ten tournament the Spartans lost a dreadful game to Minnesota. They get a five seed after starting the season as top-5 squad nationally. Lucas goes down for the year. All signs point to a collapse by a bewildered team.

Not in Izzo’s world. Instead, he’s playing walk-ons in crunch time, running a three-guard offense and sometimes has his power forward bring the ball over half court.

College basketball, as opposed to the pro game, is a coach’s domain. Players don’t dictate in college the way a Kobe Bryant-type player conducts the game on the floor. So when you see a beat-up team, picked by nobody, overcoming hardship to play in the Final Four, you know it’s coming from the head coach.

Izzo is currently writing the book on how to manage the tournament. He’s manipulating match-ups and preparing better than other teams and other coaches. It’s what has schools like Oregon gearing up to offer Izzo a contract of mammoth proportions to lure him away from his home state. Izzo currently makes about $3 million a year and Oregon has financial backing from Nike that could give him a pay raise if he leaves.

Bottom line, Tom Izzo isn’t the best coach to ever grace tournament hardwood. That may be Coach K or probably Wooden. But he is the best coach right now, this year and over the past 10 years. And if he somehow pulls off a national championship come next week, perhaps against Duke’s Royal Highness himself, no one will debate it.

Now … for some rapid fire:

-The Steelers are in shambles. First Big Ben faces his second sexual assault accusation in the past eight months and now Santonio Holmes allegedly verbally assaults — and throws a drink at — a woman in a night club. No wonder they didn’t make the playoffs. Nothing has been proven, but the reports are troublesome nonetheless. Can you say Bengals?

-Baseball’s opening day is this week … pin drop …

-Just for the record: I picked West Virginia and Duke to advance to the Final Four in my bracket.