Fierce State presence makes life even tougher for Brian Ellerbe

Chris Duprey

Dupe's Scoop

EAST LANSING - Before the season started, I asked Brian Ellerbe if he believed it was tougher to build his program at a time when neighboring Michigan State was having so much success.

I thought that if Ellerbe felt he was being treated unfairly by those who expected a top-10 team immediately - impatient alumni, the media - then maybe I could give him the forum to present his own side.

I was surprised by Ellerbe's answer that October afternoon. He said it would be tough to build his program no matter the circumstances, and that Michigan State's prowess had nothing to do with it.

Unfortunately, I didn't get an opportunity to talk with Ellerbe following Saturday's Michigan Massacre.

I would have liked to ask him that question again. I might have received a different answer this time.

Proud Old Blue faithful won't admit it, but for once in their lives, they yearn for something Michigan State owns.

For a while, the football rivalry was all that mattered to these two schools. Basketball was secondary, just something to muse over during the winter until the Big Game the next fall.

Hoops didn't seem so important until the Spartans started cutting down nets all over the country. Now impatient Michigan fans and alumni, like a four-year old who sees the kid across the street getting a swimming pool, want to know, "Why can't we have that too?"

And where does all this pressure funnel? Ellerbe, the unproven, still-learning-the-ropes coach who doesn't have the roots at Michigan to shake off the naysayers. Instead he has to constantly look over his shoulder, hoping to live another day in a violently unstable athletic administration.

This is no way to build a program. When Tom Izzo began to piece together his championship contender in 1995, he had the blessings of former coach Jud Heathcote, for whom he was an assistant coach, and university administration.

Izzo also had a rival that wasn't going any deeper than the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament every year. Confident and unafraid for his future, he coached, he recruited and he began to win.

But even if Izzo was safe in the eyes of the Michigan State athletic department, he would've felt much more pressure if the boys down south were contending for conference and national titles.

Purely by luck, Izzo felt no such pressure. And, indirectly, that had an effect on where his program is today.

Brian Ellerbe had no such fortune. He walked right into a buzzsaw, inheriting problems that weren't his, having to build his spaceship when the Russians had already launched Sputnik. For that he is the subject of endless comparison with "the Russians" in East Lansing, a comparison that Ellerbe cannot win, at least for now.

Add Michigan State's success to the long list of things that aren't Ellerbe's fault.

- Chris Duprey can be reached at cduprey@umich.edu.