Clash of the tourney titans: Rick Pitino, Tom Izzo meet again in Elite Eight chess match

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – And now, the March Madness rubber match.

Every three years, Tom Izzo and Rick Pitino get together like this – deep in the NCAA tournament, high stakes, tough teams, clashing styles. The two coaching heavyweights have traded gut punches that were felt for a long time afterward.

In 2009, Izzo's Michigan State Spartans shocked Pitino's overall No. 1 seeded Louisville Cardinals in the Elite Eight. In 2012, Pitino evened the score with a No. 4 seed that demoralized the No. 1-seeded Spartans in the Sweet 16.

"We've had some great battles," Izzo said.

Now they meet again, with a trip to the Final Four on the line. Although the context is dramatically different this time.

Neither team is a No. 1 seed – far from it. Fourth-seeded Louisville staggered through the latter part of the season, dismissing point guard Chris Jones in mid-February and reinventing itself, to a degree, after that. Seventh-seeded Michigan State comes from even farther afield, at one point being an oft-injured 15-8 with losses to Texas Southern, Nebraska and Illinois.

That explains the overt joy both coaches displayed here Friday night, after winning their Sweet 16 games. Pitino has won 53 NCAA tourney games and two national titles, and Izzo has 45 wins and one title – but rarely have they taken teams with this many apparent flaws this far. Their happiness postgame reflected the difficulty of the accomplishment.

And it also showed that winning in March never gets old, no matter how much you've done it. I suggested to Izzo that he and Pitino were almost giddy in the postgame press conference. "You read me right," Izzo said. "You probably read him right. ... 'Giddy' is a good word. I've got a couple of other ones, but it's good."

There are other adjectives that describe both men. Tough comes to mind. (Izzo is the guy who pioneered the use of football pads in basketball practice.) Combustible, too. (Louisville guard Terry Rozier told a story Saturday about Pitino kicking star guard Russ Smith off the team – for the moment – during a timeout in the middle of a game last season.) And decidedly old school.

"We're very similar in a lot of regards," Pitino said. "We don't believe in Twitter. We don't believe in too much social media. We're kind of old fashioned in that regard, but we're still young at heart in a lot of different ways. So our similarities in the way we run our programs, I think, are very stark.

"I'm a big fan of his. Always been a big fan because he stands for the right principles in our sport, does it the right way. He really loves his players, coaches them the right way. Makes them mentally and physically tough. When they leave, they're tough in business. They're tough in sports. He believes in education, all the things that I admire."

This is a challenging time for old-schoolers. John Calipari has reinvented the college model at the highest end, turning his Kentucky program into an expressway to the NBA. Bill Self and Mike Krzyzewski have recruited similarly at Kansas and Duke, respectively.

Izzo and Pitino have lost some high-profile recruits to those programs in recent years. But Pitino is 40 minutes from his third Final Four in four seasons. Izzo is in his seventh Sweet 16 appearance in the last eight years, with a pair of Final Fours during that run. Their method is still working.

The question is which style will prevail Sunday afternoon. The pressure and amorphous zone of Louisville, or the 3-point shooting and glass crashing of Michigan State?

"The game's not going to end with a Tom Izzo team until the last possession," Pitino said. "You know that. They're not going to give in. They're not going to cave."

Thing is, Louisville did make Michigan State crack in the 2012 game. The Spartans unraveled in the final 11 minutes, unable to solve the Cardinals' zone.

That was payback for 2009, when Michigan State made Louisville submit. Two days after scoring 103 points in the Sweet 16 against Arizona, the Cardinals were held to 52 by the Spartans.

Before that game, Izzo hosted old friend and former assistant Tom Crean for a pregame scouting report and film session since Crean had played Pitino so often in the Big East. This time around, Pitino has summoned La Familia to Syracuse.

Son Richard Pitino, whose Minnesota team beat Michigan State in late February, is here. So are former Pitino assistants Ralph Willard and Kevin Keatts.

There is not a surplus of preparation time in a two-day turnaround, but both teams will be as ready as possible. Sleep is optional at this time of year.

"What matters now is we've got two teams and 40 minutes," Izzo said."Some of these kids have worked -- when I just think, I look down and see Travis [Trice] and Denzel [Valentine] for sure and I think how many hours they put in this summer, all that for 40 minutes. Does it get any better than that? It reminds me of an Olympian, you work out all that time for a 100-yard sprint that you could screw up at the start.

"That's what's great about sports. That's what's great about what we have. That will be the pre-game talk. Hey, you've earned the right to be here. We didn't take an easy route to get here. We had to beat a lot of good people. So you've earned the right to have some swagger, but just understand that there's another team that's earned the right, too, and they play hard as hell, too. It should be a hell of a game as far as that goes."