After Michigan State's ridiculous loss on the basketball court to the Lakers -- the Grand Valley State Lakers -- Spartans coach Tom Izzo took a good, long look in the mirror and knew who to blame.
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| Why isn't someone confiscating Tom Izzo's office for his coaching failure? (AP) |
So Izzo did what anyone else in his finger-pointing position would do. He took away his players' Xbox. And their Twinkies. And their $2-a-bottle water and their leather chairs and everything else in the glorious Michigan State locker room. He kicked them out of their basketball home.
"You earn the right to have something that nice, and we didn't earn the right," Izzo told the Detroit Free Press. "I just said, 'Make sure that everything including the toothbrushes are out of there.'"
That'll teach 'em.
Izzo isn't the only guy who does this sort of thing. In fact, he's not the only coach who does this exact thing. When he was at Cincinnati, Bob Huggins kicked his team out of their locker room twice after defeats, and also took away their workout gear. Players on the top 10 team at UC were practicing in whatever old clothes they had in their dorms.
One week after Christmas 2001, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski reacted to a loss to unranked Florida State by going into his No. 1-ranked team's personalized locker room and depersonalizing it. He took his players' nameplates off their lockers. He took their pictures off the walls. He took away their chairs. Why, that Grinch even took the last can of Who-Hash.
Coach K, meanwhile, continued to repose in his palatial office upstairs, complete with his name and his pictures and his ergonomic leather chairs. You have to admire the man's nerve. He took away his players chairs, but still found a way to walk down the hall to the private elevator with the magic thumbprint -- only a handful of people on this earth have the print needed to access Coach K's office floor -- and adjourn to his Forbes 500 office.
Because let's be honest. When Mike Krzyzewski takes a team full of McDonald's All-Americans down to that dump in Tallahassee, Fla., and loses to a sub-.500 team coached by the genius that is Leonard Hamilton, it has to be the Duke players' fault. Not the Duke coach. Not ever the coach.
Coaches are infallible. They're geniuses, even when they suffer losses that leave you dumbstruck. Those kinds of losses have been happening all over college basketball one week into the season, whether it be exhibition losses like Michigan State's loss to Grand Valley State and Ohio State's loss to Findlay, or regular-season shockers like Kentucky's loss to Gardner-Webb, Georgia Tech's loss to UNC-Greensboro and Southern California's loss to Mercer.
About that USC loss to Mercer ...
It was horrific. The Trojans didn't have their full complement of players, what with a handful of injuries, but they still had two potential NBA lottery picks in freshman guard O.J. Mayo and sophomore forward Taj Gibson. Mercer has no lottery picks. Mercer is bad, and Mercer traveled across the country to be bad. But Mercer was still good enough to beat the Trojans and their former NBA coach, Tim Floyd, who promptly pointed the finger at his players, saying the game was "reflective of what we've been experiencing on a daily basis in practice."
Translation: My players suck.
Pertinent question: After all that practice, why do they suck?
Why does Georgia Tech with its ACC roster lose at home to a UNC-Greensboro team that had been 0-24 all-time against ACC teams?
"They executed a lot better than us," said Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt.
Translation: My players suck.
Pertinent question: Who should we blame when they suck?
Not the coaches. Not ever the coaches. Well, I take it back. In a week full of shocking losses, one coach did take full responsibility for his team's stunning loss: Kentucky's Billy Gillispie. After the Wildcats were thumped 84-68 by Gardner-Webb, Gillispie repeatedly took responsibility.
"The guy to blame for that is me," he said. "No question about it. It's all on my shoulders."
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| At least Billy Gillispie isn't afraid to take the blame when his team loses. (AP) |
At least he did. At least he didn't pull a Coach K and yank the nameplates and the chairs and the pictures out of his players' locker room. At least he didn't pull an Izzo and force his players to dress for practice in the weight room or the hallway.
After that loss to Grand Valley State, Izzo actually contemplated some self-punishment.
"I told them after the game, I probably should have taken an office outside because I didn't do a very good job, either," Izzo said.
But then he thought better of it. The players should pay. They were the ones on the court.
The coach is just the guy earning $2 million.
