EAST LANSING – When Michigan State opened practice last fall, Tom Izzo was unsure of the group’s potential.

A year later, he was back in the Breslin Center theatre with a Big Ten championship trophy on display a few feet away while previewing the start of another season.

“I’m really kind of excited to see how it is when practice gets going and you can scrimmage and you can do things on a regular basis, day in and day out,” Izzo said Monday before the first practice of the season. “It is a versatile group, it’s not like there’s a huge amount of separation but we’ve had a blueprint for that and it’s worked pretty well so hopefully we can do that again.”

Michigan State’s improbable run from opening last season unranked to winning the Big Ten by three games before reaching the Elite Eight w

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