The Izzone remains a force for Michigan State men’s basketball at the Breslin Center
It’s been nearly three decades since the student fan group started supporting MSU hoops, and their impact is legendary.
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Nearly all Division I schools with a basketball team have a student section, but few are as known or powerful as the one at Michigan State.
For decades, the Izzone has been a defining piece of the Breslin home-court advantage, creating an atmosphere that often shifts the momentum of a game. The Izzone is a force, a full sensory moment of sound, movement, color and coordination that opponents must face.
“There are countless examples over the years, but the one that really sticks out to me, because it was the first time I realized the students really can make a difference, was a couple of years ago against Northwestern,” said Izzone student section leader and Michigan State senior Josie Cayen. “They had a player, Boo Buie, who had air-balled a shot, so the students started the airball chant for a couple of minutes.
“Northwestern had to call a timeout, but the student section still did not stop, and Northwestern started turning the ball over. You could tell they were distracted by how loud it was.”
The Izzone, named after Head Coach Tom Izzo, who began leading the Spartans in 1995, is considered one of the most recognizable student sections in college basketball. Opponents often talk about the Breslin Center as one of the toughest environments in the Big Ten, which can partially be credited to how close students sit to the court and how many seats they get.
“I would say that it is one of the more special places on the campus of Michigan State and one of the most special student sections in the country,” Cayen said. “The fact that the entire bottom half of the lower bowl and a lot of the upper bowl is filled with students is something that you do not see in a lot of places.
“When other teams come here, they can really feel the students because they are basically right on top of you from warmups until you end the game.”
The Izzone’s impact reaches beyond noise. For many, it becomes a built-in community on a large campus, meeting new friends and learning traditions. That sense of connection begins before the season starts with the annual Izzone Campout in early October.
The campout gives students a chance to interact with players in a unique way, hear from Izzo, and experience a preview of the team before the season. This is usually the event that shows new members just how much the Izzone can mean.
“I think just making it more personal for the Izzone members is really cool,” said Jaclyn Cool, an Izzone student section leader and senior. “The ability to hear the players and Coach Izzo talk and interact with them when they walk around the campout helps people see their personalities. It makes you feel closer to the team when they do finally get on the court.
“You also get to meet other members in the Izzone that you might not have met otherwise, and make friendships that way, which also helps people want to keep coming to games to see those friends.”
The Izzone’s reputation is built on consistency. Thousands of students show up each game, and one of the main reasons is to be rewarded for commitment as a student. Instead of a lottery or first-come, first-served ticket process, MSU uses a point-based system that prioritizes students who attend a lot of games and stay for the full campout.
“I really like the way the process to get tickets is,” said MSU senior Izzone member Brecken Furlow. “Freshman year, I obviously wasn’t very happy about it because I wanted to be lower bowl and couldn’t, but as I got older I started to realize why the point system was so good. It rewarded you for being loyal and supporting your team through everything. I think the people who show up the most deserve to be the people who are the closest.”
Another big part of how the Izzone stands out is the role that the section leaders play on game day. They are in the arena around an hour before the doors open to help set up the lower bowl seats for the students. They help create the environment before the game even starts.
The section’s traditions also add to its identity. For home games, the students in the lower bowl will all have a newspaper that they hold up during the other team’s starting lineup is announced to act as if they are ignoring it. They also will often have hats or shirts given out during bigger games to help create a visual effect.
National broadcasts often pick up these moments, showing the Izzone bouncing, shouting and creating the kind of environment visiting teams find so difficult to play in.
The Izzone also does a great job with making students feel connected to the team even when the home season ends. A long-time tradition for MSU basketball is to have the senior kiss the Spartan head logo at midcourt as they get subbed out for the last time on senior night. When the cameras are off and the game is over, the senior Izzone members get to come down and line up to also kiss the logo before they leave the Breslin after their last game as a student.
“It is a super cool opportunity and a really nice way to thank the fans,” Cool said. “You’ve seen the players do it for four years and now you get to go down and kiss the Spartan head. It is a really cool way that the school shows their appreciation for the fans. I also think that since it is such a big tradition to the players, that they also extend that opportunity to the fans really speaks to how big of a part the fans are to this program and how much they mean to the team.”
Another one of the unique traditions that the Izzone does is the annual Izzone Alumni game. Every year the Izzone alumni will get an email with a special code to be able to go buy Izzone tickets for the selected game. This game will be entirely filled with former Izzone members in the student section. Izzo often says that this is the most high energy game of the year and is often the loudest he hears the arena get.
The ability to have that to look forward to after graduation is something not a lot of schools offer. Alumni plan trips to come back to Michigan State with all of their friends to have a reunion at this game. This really ties the fans deeper into the community that they joined when they were in college.
“My friends and I have talked a lot about that being the time when we think we will come back and meet up after graduation,” said Michigan State senior Chase Rosenberry. “Since I am from out of state it isn’t going to be easy for me to come back often and see games or my friends that live around here so I think this is a very special thing they do to allow us to come back. While
most schools do alumni weekends, this is different, to be able to go back to the student section you spent four years screaming in is a great thing.”
The game before the game: How Michigan State students reach the coveted front row
It’s like a test of endurance and will before Michigan State’s athletes hit the ice or court, with the most dedicated student fans queuing hours early to get the best general admission seats.
EAST LANSING, Mich. — The icy cold outside the Breslin Center this time of year is a constant, an expectation. When one reaches an oasis, it offers a refuge of coolness from neverending desert heat. This situation is the opposite of an oasis for students: through a few glass doors stood a refuge of warmth from neverending cold…and a basketball game.
“I’m pretty cold,” said Josh Theisen, a senior chemical engineering major. “I’ve got a coat and a hoodie under this, but my hands are cold, my feet are cold.
A thermometer left outdoors in East Lansing on Dec. 2 never reached the freezing point of water, 32 degrees. Michigan State’s seventh-ranked men’s basketball team, 7-0 at the time, happened to have a game that day. It was an important game; a Big Ten matchup against Iowa, who was also 7-0 before the contest.
Regular people who buy a ticket to an MSU football, basketball or hockey game simply walk in and claim their assigned seat. Student section tickets are general admission, creating an unofficial contest and race to the front that begins long before doors open.
“I got here at probably, like, 3:30 [p.m.],” said Elijah Darling, a sophomore civil engineering major before game against the Hawkeyes.
That was three and a half hours before the game against Iowa was set to tip off, and two hours before the doors to the arena opened.
“I just don’t mind it,” Darling said. “I’ve got nothing else to do, so I might as well get here early and get a good seat.”
This game in particular actually had a shorter line, though. It was on a Tuesday, so some students still have classes and assignments going on, and Iowa was an unranked opponent. The Hawkeyes are also a conference rival, so there is less urgency to attend a game against an opponent that MSU will play every year.
Things will be different against Duke, especially after Michigan State rolled past Iowa by 19 points. It was a Saturday game with a noon tip-off time on national television against fourth-ranked Duke, making it the first top-10 matchup in the Breslin Center since March 2019.
The Blue Devils are one of the most successful and famous college basketball teams in the country. They’ve made 18 Final Fours, including an appearance last season, and have won five national championships. It was only going to be their third-ever trip to East Lansing.
Theisen said that he was planning on getting to the Breslin Center at 4 a.m., which is five and a half hours before doors open. Michigan State changed those plans, emailing Izzone members to tell them that they couldn’t get in line until 7 a.m. due to cold.
Even with that, three and a half hours in temperatures below 20 degrees is no small task.
There’s already a high barrier of entry for students to experience a basketball game in the lower bowl. Freshmen or first-year Izzone members start in the “Upper Izzone” and must earn enough points by watching games in the very last rows of the Breslin Center before getting the right to get “Lower Izzone” tickets, who are the students prominently featured on television jumping up and down.
“This is what me and my buddies did for the football games,” said Conner Taurence, a freshman elementary education major who was the first person in line to be in the upper bowl. “We came here early; we got rewarded for it. Izzone, you could get moved down [to the lower bowl], so it’s worth it… You also have great seats in the upper [bowl]. You get to see the whole floor. It’s just great to see my team play.”
Students actually have to pay to get the right to get basketball tickets. Izzone memberships were $55 this year, and then each individual ticket is either $15 or $25, depending on the quality of the opponent or matchup.
There’s also the annual Izzone Campout, where students sleep in tents for a night on Munn Field. It’s a mandatory event for members, because those who do not attend get all points they’ve accumulated from attending games wiped out. The event began on the night of Oct. 3 this year and ended the following morning.
“There’s a level of dedication that we have to give to watch the games so close, whereas at other schools, they don’t really care,” Theisen said. “Games at Michigan, you watch on TV, and there’s nobody really there and you can just tell it’s not buzzing. I think [all the steps to reach the front] definitely add something here.”
Even though the student section in football is much larger, and the team finished just 4-8 this past season, students sometimes go through long wait times to get great seats for big games.
“Me and my buddies were there [at Spartan Stadium] 28 hours before the Michigan game, so we’ve been in worse,” Taurence said, also adding that it took “a lot of 5-hour Energies.”
Taurance also said that his group didn’t even sleep in tents, instead setting up just “a few lawn chairs.”
Getting up near the glass during hockey is no easy task, either. Demand for “Munnsters” tickets have surged over the past few years, as the hockey program has started to see more success with head coach Adam Nightingale.
“[Season tickets] sell out like that,” said junior Everet Lemon while snapping his fingers. “They sell out immediately. Like, I’m on the site when they open [and don’t get them].”
Michigan State offered returning Munnsters members the opportunity to get season tickets a day before prospective members could get them. Even though a good chunk of members are graduating every year, the majority of the remaining students appear to be renewing their memberships, which leaves very little for those who wish to jump on the bandwagon. It gets especially tight, since the hockey student section is smaller than the basketball section.
“I didn’t get them freshman year,” Lemon said. “Ever since then, I haven’t been able to get them.”
Even for those who do obtain those limited tickets for hockey games, the wait times still persist, especially for big games.
“I got here six hours before a game one time, and I was back in the benches [near the top],” said junior “Munnsters” member Andrew Gariepy in reference to a game against rival Michigan. “I wasn’t even in these seats [near the front].”