ATLANTA – Year 30 for Tom Izzo at Michigan State is in the books. The journey saw him become the all-time leader in Big Ten victories, tie the record for Big Ten regular-season titles, go undefeated in December and January for the first time, and reach a 27th consecutive NCAA Tournament, all while playing a versatile, unselfish style featuring a 10-player rotation.

The Spartans leaned on the strength of their depth all season, and ran into a singular star who was too much to handle in Auburn forward Johni Broome. The Tigers led for nearly 37 minutes Sunday in their 70-64 win over MSU in the Elite 8, sending the Spartans home with a 30-7 final record.

Auburn advances to the Final Four in San Antonio, where it’ll face 1-seed Florida in the national semifinal. The other semifinal pits 1-seed Duke against 1-seed Houston.

Everything Izzo said Sunday in his post-game press conference is below:

OPENING STATEMENT

“For the 30th year, I’m not sure I’ve ever been prouder of a team. There’s so much coach speak and things that go on in programs all over, but these guys gave me everything they had. I drained them of everything. They should take a week off. There’s nothing left in them.

“That’s kind of the way it was in the locker room. It was a tear jerking locker room because they knew they spilled it all, and yet we thought we started out poorly, which we’ve had that little bit of a problem lately. We just couldn’t recover from that 17-0 run.

“It wasn’t through lack of effort. It wasn’t through lack of anything except we played a good team. Broome hurt us early. We made some adjustments, did a little better job on him after he hit those first, I think, six or eight points.