Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo had a very clear message for reporters after Wednesday's practice: We are only going to talk about basketball from now on.
The Spartans had their final practice in East Lansing Wednesday, before heading to New York for the Big Ten Tournament for which they have the No. 1 seed.
"We're not answering any questions, my team, anymore, about anything but basketball. That's going to be it," Izzo said as sort of an opening statement. "It's basketball questions. I owe it to them, and I mean this strongly, I owe it to them and I owe it to my staff that we're going to focus in, because it's been a lot of distractions. I tried to do it as best I can for all of you. I never cut off our locker room or anything else, but now it's going to be basketball time. These players, this staff deserves to focus in on basketball. That's what we're going to do, and see if we can make this incredible year even more special."
Izzo said the controversy off the court has indeed impacted his team's ability to focus on the court. Despite that, they head into the Big Ten Tournament on a 12 game win streak.
"You know, when you're in a family and one member of the family gets rocked, the family gets rocked. So I just want to make sure, because this has been a special group...all of you know it...and they deserve to make as a good a run as they're going to make without any distractions."
