What brings the No. 4 men's basketball team in the country to the Stan Sheriff Center on Saturday afternoon, a place where few other ranked non-conference teams have tread of late?

"Stupidity," said the man who agreed to it, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo.

"Stupidity is probably the best answer I can give you," Izzo said. "What sounded good last March or February never sounds as good when you gotta go do it."

Izzo says all this with a hearty chuckle, lest you think he will have to be dragged kicking and screaming on board his flight like the Spartans' football coach, John L. Smith, last year.

It was Smith who said a trip here to play a game "is like a re-occurring bad dream" and "a penalty to be served." And that was before the 41-38 loss.

Of course, Smith, who has lost five of his past six games after a 4-0 and No. 11 start this year, is having trouble winning anywhere these days, including homecoming in East Lansing, Mich.

Except for asking for — and getting — a Big Ten officiating crew for the UH game, Izzo has balked about little involving this trip. Maybe that's what having your team featured on the cover of The Sporting News as the magazine's No. 1 pick does. Perhaps it is returning the nucleus of a team that went 26-7 last year, losing to eventual national champion North Carolina in the NCAA semifinals.

Or, maybe, it is in realizing that the trip to Hawai'i brings him full circle on the first decade of a remarkable head coaching career that took inaugural flight in the Islands.

For it was in the EA Sports Maui Invitational in 1995 that Izzo got his first win, loss and dose of reality as the Spartans' head coach.

"I remember blowing out Chaminade by two (points)," Izzo said. "I remember looking behind the bench with about two minutes left and Jud Heathcote (his mentor) and Magic Johnson sitting there and I wasn't feeling real comfortable."

That earned a semifinal matchup with North Carolina for which Izzo said TV flashed a pregame graphic reading: "Coaching Comparison: Dean Smith 837 wins, Tom Izzo 1. Good luck, Tom."

Since then, it has been little about luck. Izzo has taken the Spartans to a national championship, four Final Fours, five Elite Eights, gathering a 233-97 record and, along the way, a realization of what it takes to get a team tournament-ready.

"I think this program is to the point now where — win or lose — we have to find out where we are early and then build from there," Izzo said.

Which means, on the way to Monday's Maui Invitational, stopping over for a game with UH that most would have turned down.

"I think Hawai'i deserves to have some good teams in there," Izzo said. "(UH coach Riley Wallace) has done an unbelievable job and I guess we were one of them that is dumb enough to come out."

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.