EAST LANSING – Two of the most successful coaches in the business ever taking their longtime friendship to the court while wearing ugly Christmas sweaters.
Michigan State and Oakland will meet on Saturday (noon, BTN) at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit in what has become an annual tradition unlike any other.
Although Michigan State coach Tom Izzo and Oakland’s Greg Kampe trade playful shots about equally, the head-to-head matchup is as one-sided as possible. The Spartans own a 23-0 all-time record against the Golden Grizzlies with those two on the bench for every game.
“It’s a win, win, win, win, win,” Izzo, now in his 31st season leading the program, said after practice on Thursday, “except if you don’t win.”
The No. 9 Spartans (10-1) are rolling while the Golden Grizzlies (6-6) have won five of their last six after a brutal three-game stretch to open the season with losses on the road against top-10 teams Michigan, Purdue and Houston.
“Kampe’s Kampe,” Izzo said of the 42-year leader at Oakland. “He does an unbelievable job and he plays the most screwed up zone. He keeps telling me he knows what he’s doing, I don’t believe him. They’re confused, we’re confused, he’s confused, everybody’s confused and it has some success because he gets his guys to play really hard. They’re a different team this year. They’re a little more physical I think than they’ve been in the past.”
The tie between the two programs began when Oakland marked its move to Division I and opening of the O’Rena with a lopsided loss against Michigan State in 1998. Izzo joining Kampe by wearing an ugly Christmas sweater is a recent development with Saturday marking the fourth year of an agreement. It will also be a first Izzo’s wife, Lupe, bought this year’s choices.
“I feel like an idiot half the time,” Izzo said while joking about getting hit with a technical foul while wearing one during a 2022 game. “That’s not so much fun. It was all his idea and I just went along with it and now it’s become a tradition and it’s actually a pretty good tradition.”
Following a lopsided win against Toledo on Tuesday, Michigan State has extended time to practice amid winter break. A lot of that has been spent dealing with Oakland’s complicated zone defense.
“There’s nothing really concrete about it,” senior center Carson Cooper said. “There’s no 3-2, there’s no 2-3, there’s no 1-2-2, you don’t know what it is until everybody’s kind of flying around and it’s just little pockets of space that you have to try to find in certain situations.”
Michigan State isn’t a stranger to facing a zone but plans on being more prepared this time around. Izzo is still beating himself up after the Spartans struggled against an unexpected late zone look from Duke in their lone loss of the season.
“We did something really unique after the Duke game,” Izzo said, “the head coach decided to work on the zone. … It’s flat-out I didn’t do my job on that so we’ve spent a lot more time and I’m looking forward to seeing how we do against a zone.”
