East Lansing – When Tom Izzo looks at his bench or through the table during meetings, he does not simply see the many faces of new assistants.
He has a glimpse of his coach past.
Thomas Kelley? As an assistant coach, Izzo recruited the custody of his Grand Rapids high school in Michigan State Basketball. They reached the Final Four together in 1999.
Austin Thornton? He too played for Izzo in two Final Fours, including the 2009 national championship match.
From left to right, assistant coaches from the state of Michigan Thomas Kelley, Jon Borovich and Saddi Washington celebrate a room against Bryant during the second half of the first round of the NCAA tournament in Rocket Arena in Cleveland, Ohio on Friday March 21, 2025.
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Jon Borovich? He met Izzo at the age of 15, when MSU recruited the teammates of the AAU Charlie Bell, Shane Battier and Dane Fife.
Even the newcomer Saddi Washington, who arrived during the offseason, has known Izzo since he was a teenager in the early 1990s before playing in western Michigan and playing professionally.
While Izzo’s long -standing confidant Doug Wojcik won the Big Ten’s deputy coach’s prize and served as his boss’s right man during the games this season, the other four deputy coaches of the Spartans – all under 50 – have brought a young perspective for Izzo, 70.
As well as almost life of relations with them all.
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“What do they say, six degrees of separation? There is always a link,” Kelley said after training on Tuesday, with MSU three days to overthrow his appearance Sweet 16. “And Coach loves this familiarity.”
And with regard to the time of the NCAA tournament, Izzo relied on his assistants with a short preparation time between the towers and the games. The next step is Friday as a southern region of region No. 2 MSU (29-6) faces the seeded n ° 6 Mississippi (24-11) in Sweet 16 at State Farm Arena in Atlanta. Tipoff is at 7:09 p.m. (CBS), the winner going to the Sunday elite against Auburn or Michigan.
This occurs after Izzo staff have experienced many turnover in recent years.
Mike Garland, his teammate from Izzo College in northern Michigan and the long -standing assistant, retired in 2022. Dwayne Stephens – who was recruited by Izzo and played for Jud Heathcote (1989-93) – spent 19 years in Izzo before taking a job as a head coach Michigan in 2023. Unssuccess Job to his Alma Mater, Indiana, in 2022. Mark Montgomery, another recruit from Izzo and a Heathcote player, took the post of Mercy of Detroit last summer after his second visit to the Izzo bench.
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This forced Izzo to rework its staff, tighting fairly closely to its plan of what made MSU a blue blood.
“The coach has been doing it for 27 years in a row, so there is a secret sauce in terms of the good temperature of the difficulty of driving guys and when in a way to retreat,” said Washington, who grew up in Lansing and met Izzo when he was “14 or 15” while playing collection games on the campus with MSU players. “But the thing that has been the most consistent is to stick to details. We will always prepare. We will always try to give guys like many answers to the test, so this playing time, they just move in their authentic way.”
Originally from 46 years of Bloomfield Hills, Borovich played in the center of Michigan from 1997 to 2001. Izzo gave him his start of coach as a graduate assistant (2001-03) and initially brought him back as a recruitment director in 2022 after Borovich spent three years as an assistant trainer in Northwestern. Borovich was then promoted to one of the assistant jobs of the Spartans last summer after the departure of Montgomery and the NCAA allowed staff training to develop their previous limit of three.
Saddi Washington’s assistant coaches, Jon Borovich and Thomas Kelley from the Spartans of the State of Michigan lean against the North West Wildcats in Welsh-ryan Arena on January 12, 2025 in Evanston, Illinois.
This NCAA decision also enabled Thornton, from Cedar Springs, to join coaches after their return in 2021 as a video coordinator. A former MSU captain, the 36 -year -old man went to four Sweet 16 and won three regular season of Big Ten Sous Izzo from 2007 to 2.
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Kelley, as a player from 1994 to 1999, filled the gap of Heathcote’s moor in Izzo. The 48 -year -old man was among the last two MSU teams not to do the NCAA tournament (1996 and 1997), but was also in the first teams of 16 and last four years of Izzo in the following years. Kelley returned to MSU western Michigan in 2022.
The son of the 1960s, the big Basketball Spartan, Great Stan Washington, Saddi Washington is somewhat absurd, in that he did not play or trained for Izzo and spent eight seasons at Rival Michigan under John Beilein and Juwan Howard. Kelley – who recalled that he had played against Washington in the second year in the 1992 high school tournament – said that Washington’s experience in scouting against MSU opened the eyes and minds of the seated.
“He has a new pair of eyes,” said Kelley about Washington. “He gives a different point of view:” When you have all run this, we looked at him in this way. Or: “When we played against the Wisconsin, we kept them this way. “When you perform this game for Tyson, we kept it this way. So he gave us this.
Wojcik moved into an advisory role during the offseason, which opened a place for Izzo to hire Washington to work with the big of Msu. The symbiosis between the staff has paid major dividends.
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“I think Coach has done a phenomenal job to really delegate and use all our skills and what we bring to the table,” said Borovich. “And I think that having … a lot of familiar guys with the program, but also guys who have a lot of different horizons, can bring new ideas to the table that can be discussed among the group, filter the things we love, that we do not like, then try to execute.
“The coach, I think, has done a phenomenal job to really have roles defined among the staff, so we have a clear idea of our responsibilities, so that we can really have these responsibilities and then try to execute it to come.”
Contact Chris Solari: [email protected]. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State Basketball: Young assistants show the story of Tom Izzo
