ATLANTA — Auburn basketball is a game away from the Final Four, but in order to get there, it'll have to go through a pseudo-blue blood.
The Tigers will be tasked with halting 2-seed Michigan State in the Elite Eight on Sunday (4:05 p.m. CT, CBS), and stopping a legendary coach in Tom Izzo from leading the Spartans to a ninth Final Four under his watch.
Should Auburn stop the Spartans, it'd join rare company. Michigan State is 8-2 in the Elite Eight under Izzo. But the coach is well aware he'll have his hands full with the Tigers.
"I learned early in my career that you'd better be able to adjust and play big, small, fast, slow, fist fight or prom date," Izzo said Saturday. "You can do a lot of different things, and that's kind of the way I try to approach my guys. We've got to be prepared because we're not just trying to win the league, you're always trying to go deep into the tournament. So, I looked at it then early on, and I haven't changed much. We're not going to get caught up in what they do.
"I do think my team can't shoot the 3 like his (Bruce Pearl) team can, and we don't have an inside player like his, but we have ten guys that are on a mission, and the mission is to get to San Antonio. We're going to try to make that happen."
Ahead of the Elite Eight, here's what Izzo said about Pearl and the Tigers.
Does Tom Izzo's previous Elite Eight contest against Bruce Pearl carry any weight?
Sunday's contest will be the second-ever meeting between Auburn and Michigan State. The same goes for the head coaches, and ironically enough, their first meeting was in the Elite Eight 15 years prior.
Izzo led the 5th-seeded Spartans to a 70-69 win over 6-seed Tennessee in the 2010 NCAA Tournament. But to Izzo, that result doesn't matter much ahead of Sunday.
"I think he's got different players," Izzo said. "I've got different players. I think he probably coaches a little different. I probably coach a little different. ... All of those special teams things, out-of-bounds plays, free throws, free throw block-outs, they matter. I think they mattered back then. We had a couple big plays that I remember, and they matter now."
Does Tom Izzo see Auburn basketball as an Elite Eight underdog?
Auburn, the No. 1 overall seed in this year's tournament, is the underdog against Michigan State. At least that's what Pearl said Sunday.
"Most of our guys are guys that were mid-majors or junior college or Division II," Pearl said. "I'm not going to let Michigan State play the underdog card, even though we're No. 1 seed and they're No. 2 seed. No, they're Michigan State. They're Kansas, they're Duke, they're North Carolina, and we're Auburn. We know our place."
Is that something Izzo really gets down with?
"I don't know," he said. "Every team's different. Bruce has done a helluva job at a couple different SEC schools, Tennessee and, of course, Auburn. ... We're different teams in a lot of different ways, we're similar teams in a lot of different ways. I don't know what's an underdog. You get to this point, and there are no underdogs. If he wants to make us a favorite, I'm cool with that. If he wants to make us an underdog, I've been in that role before, too."
Adam Cole is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email atacole@gannett.com or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter,@colereporter.
