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    • Champions Classic for basketball elites. Why is the state of Michigan here?
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    Champions Classic for basketball elites. Why is the state of Michigan here?

    Vaseline Posted on

    ATLANTA – With every missed layup, three rattled balls and a clumsy pass out of bounds, you can imagine Danny Hurley somewhere in Connecticut watching with steam from his nostrils as Tuesday’s game here between No. 1 Kansas and Michigan State he does a full Seinfeld-meets-George-Carlin routine.

    “Classic Champion? What on earth do you call that a classic? And lastly I checked: aren’t we the champions?“

    To be clear, Hurley did not say this. As far as we know, he wasn’t even looking. But if Hurley was looking for a little motivation to start the season, he probably could have found it here, as the supposed No. 1 team in the country posted a 77-69 win over a Michigan team that that won’t be. the champion of anything soon.

    Considering that Tom Izzo’s one and only national title will be a quarter century old when the Final Four takes place again this year, perhaps it’s time to find a new team for this annual event that – if we take words literally – have teams that actually win championships.

    Maybe, like the team that has won five NCAA titles since Izzo’s crowning moment 25 years ago.

    Seriously, why is Michigan State still invited to participate in this? If the theory behind the Champions Classic is to increase interest in college basketball by getting four bluebloods in the same building for an early-season ESPN showcase, you should put the best programs in it.

    Sorry, but Michigan State is no longer eligible.

    For Izzo, who turns 70 in January, this has been a decade of decline. Oh, he’s as good as ever when he gets grumpy about the culture surrounding college athletics these days and can tell reporters that things (at least for him) aren’t as good as they used to be.

    But at court? Well, the Spartans don’t breathe that air anymore. They are still the tough lunch bucket team that guards and plays physical and messes things up a bit for more talented opponents.

    They’re just a lesser version of that now, led by Frankie Fidler, a transfer from Omaha, and Jaxon Kohler, a junior who averaged 2.0 points per game last season.

    And if you compare that against Kansas? Well, it wasn’t much to look at if we’re being honest.

    “Offensively, we were both bad,” Izzo said.

    Give Izzo credit for keeping the game competitive deep into the second half, despite his team shooting 3-for-24 from the three-point line and shooting 35 percent overall.

    But this isn’t the ‘Lose Close and Make It Ugly Classic’. This should be for the elite of the elite. The only thing Michigan State was elite at on Tuesday was bleeding 18,000 pairs of eyes.

    “You have to finish games like this, especially against teams like Michigan State,” Kansas guard Dajuan Harris Jr. said.

    Speaking of damnation with faint praise. And it was completely predictable. This is who Michigan State is now in the current decade: underskilled, uninspiring and more likely to sweat the NCAA Tournament bubble than cut down the nets. There’s nothing wrong with that. There are dozens of college basketball teams that play like Michigan State, look like Michigan State, and some will make deep runs in next March’s NCAA tournament. For all we know, these Spartans could be one of them.

    But that’s not the point.

    When then-Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis helped pitch this event to ESPN in 2011, it made sense to share the stage with Kentucky, Duke and Kansas. Izzo sent teams to the Final Four every few years, and the Spartans finished at least somewhere around the top ten every season.

    But Tuesday marked the third time in the past four years that Michigan State came to the Champions Classic unranked, and last season they were No. 18. When you compare that to the star quality the other programs bring to this event — and that a team if UConn could bid – how does it make sense that the Spartans are still here?

    For most of this event’s history, Michigan State made its money on consistency, if not championships. But now there is no question that the Spartans are a step lower, and that they won because of their reputation rather than their results.

    Is this the Champions Classic or the “Three Champions and the Middle of the Big Ten Classic”?

    Izzo is the kind of coach who believes you deserve what you get. If Michigan State can’t meet that standard, we don’t have to continue to allow them to turn this event into a misnomer.

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