The Most Frustrating Players of the Tom Izzo Era

Tom Izzo isn’t the best recruiter on the college basketball scene, but he always seems to get players that fit the Spartan program and Izzo’s hard nose style of play.  He might not be John Calipari (this is a good thing) but the bottom line is that Izzo gets very good high school players to come to East Lansing.  That being said, with great expectations, sometimes great failures can emerge.  

As I watched Michigan State get beat by Ohio State (the number three team in the land at the time) I couldn’t help but notice the absence of Senior guard Durrell Summers from the stat sheet.  Summers only attempted one shot the entire game.  It was one of the most dumbfounding and frustrating things to witness on so many levels.  My arm was half-way through the T.V. set before I remembered it wasn't mine.

Several beers later, I got to thinking about Spartan players who had frustrated me in the past.  Guys who were highly touted recruits out of high school, who for whatever reason never seemed to live up to expectations.  


Here is what I came up with, a list of my top-five most frustrating players of the Tom Izzo era.

5.  Raymar Morgan.  Like everyone else on this list, it wasn't that Morgan wasn’t a good player.  It’s not like he didn't have skills and help us win games, he did. But remember this is the list of the most frustrating players of the Izzo era.  Maybe it was because Raymar had such a solid freshman year, but he never quite lived up to expectations after that.  Injuries and illnesses stunted his development.  His defense was All-Big Ten, but he seemed to disappear during stretches of the season on the offensive end and when he did come up with an outpouring of points it only seemed to show Spartan fans what could have been.  His offensive inconsistency was maddeningly frustrating.

4.   Kelvin Torbert.  Coming out of high school Torbert was named national player of the year by both Gatorade and the Sporting News.  Needless to say we were mildly frustrated when he only averaged double-digit points in one of his seasons on campus.  Still, Torbert transformed himself into a defensive stopper and helped lead MSU to a surprising Final Four run in 2005.  Torbert was frustrating because he didn’t live up to expectations, but he was still a very solid Big-10 player and earned the respect of Spartan fans everywhere.

3.  Marquise Gray.  The thing about Marquise Gray was that he was never all that good, but we were fooled into thinking he was good.  Gray was the man-among-boys in high school who simply dominated lesser opponents.  He earned a 5-star ranking by the recruiting gurus and so when he arrived in East Lansing we expected to see a 5-star performances from him.  When I used to sit two rows behind the Spartan bench I never saw Izzo more frustrated with a player than he was with Gray.  Izzo was just as frustrated as we all were, you could see it.  Even when Gray played well, he would manage to screw it up by doing crap like giving the finger-across-the-throat-gesture after a dunk and Izzo would pull his ass and scream at him.  ‘Quise was so frustrating because he was such a freak athlete, we knew if he could learn a post move or two he would be nearly unstoppable but that never happened.

2.  Chris Allen.  He might have been the most hyped prospect of the ’06 recruiting class simply because he had hot YouTube clips and was from Georgia (basically a foreign country to many Michiganders), but for three years Allen suffered the wrath of Spartan fans for his sloppy play and missed 3 pointers (Coming in we were told by Izzo himself that Allen had “unlimited range” and could “shoot it like Shawn Respert” riiiiiight)  Still, in his final season with the team, Allen played solid perimeter defense and even started driving it to the rack when his shot wasn’t falling (something his pal Summers wouldn’t know anything about) and so Spartan fans finally started coming around to him.  Just when we were warming up to him, he got kicked off the team and had the same Spartans who had boo’d him wishing this year “Man, if only we had Chris Allen” Geesh, talk about frustrating.

1 Durrell Summers.  As voted on by the handful of people who visited WilburWired over the past few weeks Durrell Summers is the most frustrating Spartan of the Tom Izzo era.  Even at his best, Summers is a streaky shooter who can turn from hot to cold (and vice-versa) in a matter of minutes, but he is the most frustrating Spartan of the Tom Izzo era because his worst cold streak came just when the Spartans needed him most.  After THIS DUNK in his sophomore year, most people thought at the very least, he was the next Mo-Pete or Charlie Bell.  Never happened.  Four hit-or-miss years later most fans are happy to see him gone.  Forget the constant rumors surrounding his personal life (I heard his favorite movie was "How High"), the fact is Summers was a guy who, while in the midst of the worst shooting streak of his career, couldn’t even beat anyone off the dribble and get to the free-throw line.   Still, he has a few more games (maybe) to turn it around and make Spartan fans forgive his abysmal play the past few months, but no one will forgot how freaking frustrating he was to watch for four years.

Honorable Mention: Tom Herzog, Thomas Kelley, Marcus Taylor

Of course, since I am a huge Michigan State homer, I don’t like to leave this blog post on such a negative vibe.  So I had to have a list of the Spartan players who exceeded expectations during their time in East Lansing

5. Travis Walton.  Walton embodied the true Izzo Spartan creed.  Toughness, defense and leadership.  He was the Spartan every other teams fans hated, and we loved.

4. Matt Trannon.  Trannon was a highly recruited football and basketball player out of high school.  He chose football as his primary sport, but helped the Spartan hoop team out every now and again.  Fans loved him for his toughness (dude played sporting a broken nose and a Hannibal Lector mask that made it nearly impossible to breathe, did he complain? nope) 

3. Drew Nietzel.  Yes he was Michigan's Mr. Basketball in 2004. Yes, he put up prolific numbers in high school.  But, really? not many fans thought he would do what he did during his tenure in East Lansing.  His Junior year he put the team on his back and willed the Spartans to a unlikely tournament run.  He proved his worth in East Lansing and proved short white dudes could still get buckets.

2. Mike Kebler.  Admittedly I have a soft spot for Kebler since we both went to Okemos High School, and for a while there it looked like Kebler would simply fill the token white guy walk-on role guys like Steve Cherry and Mat Ishbia had perfected before him.  But Kebler wouldn't let that happen.  Thrust into action due to injuries last season he proved he could guard anyone in the Big-10.  This year, he even found a semblance of a shooting touch and proved he most definitely wasn't cool with being the token white walk-on. 

1. Tim Bograkos.  Bograkos was another walk-on who spurned the the labels and made meaningful contributions to the Spartan hoops program.  It's no surprise MSU has a walk-on award named after Mr. Bograkos who didn't have the offensive skills Kebler does, but made up for it by busting his ass on defense and being one of the peskiest on-ball defenders Michigan State had ever seen.  Respect.

Honorable Mention: Goran Suton, A.J. Granger, Andre Hutson

Los Amigos Invisibles at the Black Cat

It’s really no wonder Los Amigos Invisibles are among the biggest band in Venezuela, they mix poppy dance beats, funky latino drums and solid, fun guitar riffs.  The front-man is almost irrelevant though in a band like this, he was more of a hype-man, encouraging the fans to hop around.  You felt more like people were there for the dancing and grooving and the lyrics were inconsequential at times, especially since he was singing in Spanish.   

But that didn’t matter.  The Black Cat is a great music venue and I had wormed my way up nearly to the front of the stage.  Los Amigos sounded like hooky -pop freebasing Latino rhythm with dashing DJ beats.  This combo lead to many bouncy efforts and even “Rock Fist-bumping” (note: this is when you have your hands in the “metal” pose with your pinky/1^st finger/thumb extended and then fist pump the hell out of the beat.)  My initial reaction was they were a mix between DeadMau5 and Maroon 5 but much more raw than either.

I was also semi-impressed by the opening band RubbleBucket whose stage was as crowded as it could stand to be with instruments of all assortments.  Through all the saxophone, trombone, trumpets the thing that stood out to me the most was their drum and bass guys.  They drove the show and without it those laying down precision rhythm, the improv moments would have ceased to exist.  RubbleBucket earned negative points for a trombonist who was white and had dreadlocks.

My guess is that Los Amigos Invisibles sound better live than it ever could on CD/disk/mp3/whatever.  They were fun but they weren’t anything too special.  I highly recommend a live show.  Bring a date, especially if she is one of the many Latino women in D.C.  Either way, if you love dancing your ass off, go see Los Amigos Invisibles.