East Lansing, Mich. — Michigan State head coach Adam Nightingale has been named a finalist for Big Ten Coach of the Year honors. The first-year Spartan mentor has guided the Spartans into the Big Ten Tournament semifinals, and will take on No. 1/1 Minnesota on Saturday.
Nightingale has guided the Spartans to an 18-17-2 overall record, and the team finished 10-12-2 in Big Ten play. Selected ninth in the pre-season Big Ten coaches poll, the Spartans were just four points out of second place in the league standings and just one point shy of securing home ice with a top-four finish in the league. In only one previous season have the Spartans finished higher than fifth place in the Conference standings (2015).
Nightingale, a 2005 Michigan State graduate, guided his squad to the first-ever Big Ten Tournament wins last weekend a 2-1 series victory on the road at Notre Dame (0-1, 4-2, 4-2). It was the first postseason series victory for Michigan State since the 2012-13 campaign when MSU went to Alaska and knocked off the Nanooks in three games in the first round of the CCHA Tournament before falling to top-seeded Miami in the quarterfinals, two games to one.
The Spartans have increasingly regained national respect as the season has worn on, taking points from five of six Big Ten opponents throughout the season and earning non-conference victories among teams in the ranked among the nation’s top 20 at the time of the games. Michigan State has been ranked in the DCU/USCHO and USA Hockey Magazine/ESPN polls for 16 consecutive weeks this season, its longest residence in the national polls since the 2009-10 campaign. As the Big Ten has established itself as the strongest conference top-to-bottom in Division I hockey this season, MSU has played 25 of its 37 games against ranked teams, including 15 of its last 18.
From the day of his hiring last April, Nightingale has stressed that the Spartans would focus on improvement rather than results – that the recipe for success was attending to the small details, training hard, and doing things both on and off the ice that would lead to consistent improvement. If the focus was on improvement, the results the Spartans desired would come. With 18 wins, MSU already has a six-win improvement over 2021-22, and has the most victories for any Spartan squad since…
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