Tom Izzo: 'I owe it to' players to answer only hoops-related questions

— -- EAST LANSING, Mich. --? Michigan State men's basketball coach Tom Izzo opened his final news conference before leaving for the Big Ten tournament in New York by reiterating that from now on he and his team will answer only basketball questions from the media.

"We're not answering any questions, my team, anymore, about anything but basketball. That's going to be it. It's basketball questions," Izzo said Wednesday after the team's final on-campus practice in East Lansing, Mich. "I owe it to them, and I mean this strongly. I owe it to them and I owe it to my staff; we're going to focus in because it's been a lot of distractions. I tried to do it as best I could for all of you, never cut off my locker room or anything else.

"But now, it's going to be basketball time. These players, this staff deserves to focus in on basketball. That's what we're going to do and see if we can make this incredible year even more special."

Izzo did mention the NCAA investigation involving Spartans sophomore guard? Miles Bridges, in which Bridges was ruled ineligible for one day and required to pay $40 to a charity of his choice. Izzo said that he fully believes he and the university acted properly and cooperated with all parties involved.

"I just want to expound on that; our compliance people had sent the information to the NCAA," Izzo said. "They conducted their own search, sent it to the NCAA, it came back, they cleared him unequivocally. We do not have to, at any reason, shape or form, think that there will be anything else that he has to go through. I expect him here the rest of the year.

"As far as all these allegations, I'm just going to tell you that I feel very comfortable that we've emphatically cooperated with everybody on every search. Everything we've done, I think we've appropriately handled it exactly the way we were supposed to handle it with the rules at the time."