Can Michigan and Michigan State football coexist? Basketball shows they can
EAST LANSING, Mich. — If anyone understands both the intensity of the Michigan-Michigan State rivalry and also what it takes to be elite, it's the men's basketball coaches at the schools.
Tom Izzo has taken seven Spartan teams to the Final Four, including last season's; he's also won a national championship. John Beilein resurrected a flailing Michigan basketball program, turned it into a national power and took a team to the title game back in 2013.
For the past five or so years, both basketball programs have — to borrow Spartan football coach Mark Dantonio's turn of phrase — "coexisted." Quite well, in fact, while the football programs have moved in opposite directions.
Izzo believes the key with hoops has been stability. He's been at the helm in East Lansing since 1995, and he coached as an assistant there for more than a decade prior. Beilein followed a string of mediocre tenures — Brian Ellerbe, Tommy Amaker — before returning the Wolverines to the NCAA tournament in 2009 for the first time in 11 years. They've been back nearly every spring since, and they've won two Big Ten championships in the meantime. One of those (2012) they shared with the Spartans.
Izzo credits former Michigan athletic director Bill Martin for thinking creatively when he hired Beilein back in 2007. "(Martin) looked differently," Izzo told Paste BN Sports on Tuesday. "John was not the sexy hire in anybody's mind. He was successful, but not sexy. At West Virginia, the same thing."
But Beilein could bring stability — and winning. He'd done that everywhere he'd been.
"From Day 1, I thought when I came in here, I wasn't a hater as much as I was thinking, Michigan State is not going to go away,' " Beilein told Paste BN Sports on Wednesday. "We saw them as a program we had to get in line with. We had to have the same resources that they had."
Michigan invested significantly in basketball, renovating Crisler Center and building a state-of-the-art practice facility, both key pieces in the Wolverines' recent run of success, particularly with recruiting. He implemented his system, recruiting the kinds of kids he wanted to create the culture he believed in, and quickly the Wolverines turned the corner.
"Facility upgrades, coaching upgrades — boom, boom, boom, boom, boom," Izzo said. "They put a lot more money into it. That's paid some dividends. We put more money into our basketball over the years. Now, what you might have is the rivalry that's supposed to be a rivalry.
"They say the greatest rivalry is Duke and Carolina. Why is it the greatest rivalry? Because they've both been good for 30 years. If we're up and (Michigan) is down, doesn't make it as good a rivalry. If they're up and we're down, like was the case in football forever, since I've been around, it wasn't a very good rivalry."
Since Beilein took over, Michigan has beaten Michigan State six times in hoops; the Spartans have won nine times. One piece that's helped both programs stay nationally relevant but not exhaust the talent base is that Michigan recruits more nationally than Michigan State. And the coaches run different systems, so each seeks players with slightly different skill sets.
Both teams have competed at a high level and against each other at a high level, without one side dropping off completely.
"Over the last six years, it's been virtually a stalemate," Beilein said. "It's been very close. He had injuries one year, we had injuries another year. It's going to go back and forth like that. But that's why I say, wouldn't it be wonderful for the state of Michigan — and it's almost happened twice now — that both of us are in the Final Four at the same time? Wouldn't that be wonderful? … This is perfect.
"And the same thing in football. I see that happening, just based on my perspective as a non-football coach. Michigan State isn't going away in football, and Michigan is coming back strong. Why can't we both be strong?"
Stability is the key to a high-caliber rivalry, both coaches said. Izzo listed off the string of football coaches he outlived before Dantonio. Beilein is on his fourth football coach in Ann Arbor.
"It was the other way around (a string of basketball coaches), and that would be why the Michigan basketball program went dormant there from the mid-90s to 2009," Beilein said. "While Tom was a rock at Michigan State. Tom was a rock up there, building a program. That's the big thing."
Beilein is now a rock in Ann Arbor, too. And perhaps that's the biggest key to the blueprint for in-state success, even between two heated rivals.
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