EAST LANSING – A few hours before the Detroit Pistons and the Phoenix Suns came to his house for an exhibition game, Tom Izzo walked out of the Breslin Center and into Munn Ice Arena in perfect condition. Michigan State athletic fashion.
A basketball coach with a football building named after him is moved to a hockey arena named after a legendary football coach.
Yet the main focus on Tuesday, in a week filled with unique opportunities and experiences for his Spartans, was Izzo’s return home. And not across the street to his arena.
Towards the Upper Peninsula. In Marquette. To his roots and the foundation of where and how he made MSU basketball a national power on par with what Munn did for the football program.
The Spartans will fly to the UP for their unofficial home opener, a sold-out exhibition matchup with Izzo’s alma mater, Northern Michigan. The exchange between the perennial powerhouse and its former Division II program at Marquette’s Superior Dome will take place Sunday at 1 p.m. and the game will be televised on the Big Ten Network.
“I’m excited to take my team there. I’m excited to see the people. I’m excited to maybe do something for Northern,” said Izzo, who graduated from NMU in 1977. “I’m excited for my guys, because I think they’ll have a better idea. I always went to Flint, I always went to Detroit, I always went to Saginaw. I saw where these guys were coming from. They never go where I come from.
“And now they’re going to have a chance, and maybe this will help them understand me a little better.”
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This will be MSU’s first game in the UP since a 91-59 regular season victory over Izzo and the Wildcats on Dec. 16, 1974. He was a sophomore on that NMU team and became an All-Point scorer. Division II American. keep his senior year before embarking on a Hall of Fame coaching career that began at the UP high school level
Along with MSU’s rare visit, Northern Michigan will retire Izzo’s No. 10 on Sunday.
After two years as head coach at Ishpeming High, Izzo returned to Marquette and was an assistant coach with the Wildcats for four years, then moved to East Lansing to join Jud Heathcote’s staff and never left . He was an assistant from 1983 to 1995, then took over the program when Heathcote retired after the 1994-95 season.
Now 69, Izzo enters his 30th season at the helm as MSU’s all-time winningest head coach, with the longest NCAA tournament streak in franchise history. Division I (26 and counting) and fifth-most Final Four appearances in NCAA history (eight) behind fellow icons Mike Krzyzewski (13), John Wooden (12), Dean Smith (11) and Roy Williams (nine).
It was a long trip from his hometown of Iron Mountain, 80 miles southwest of Marquette. Izzo said he wants it to be “an educational trip for my players, as well as a trip that will mean a lot to me.”
“I wanted to do two things with this,” Izzo said. “I’ve always wanted to try to give back a little to the places I’ve been and the people who have helped me. … But more importantly, I think in this day and age, I want my players to see where some of us started. Because I believe that we are currently in a society where rights are too high, and where there are not many rights up there.
“And that’s why I love it, because I’m not interested in law.”
Honorary coach
Izzo announced Tuesday that his former high school coach, Gordy LeDuc, will serve as MSU’s honorary captain on Sunday.
LeDuc only spent one year at Iron Mountain, but it was a memorable year for the Mountaineers – and a pivotal moment in Izzo’s life. It happened at NMU’s old Hedgcock Fieldhouse more than 50 years ago.
Trailing by one point in the 1972 Upper Peninsula regional final against rival West Iron County, with a berth in the state quarterfinals on the line, Mountaineers junior point guard Tommy Izzo headed to the free throw line for the front of a 1-and-1. He shot. He missed. His team lost 51-50. LeDuc was the one who comforted and consoled him in the tears that followed.
LeDuc was a 2018 inductee into the Michigan High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame as well as a member of the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan and the Upper Peninsula Sports Hall of Fame. And like Izzo, he is a member of the NMU Athletics Hall of Fame.
The 84-year-old had a basketball record of 379-211 at six different high schools, leaving Iron Mountain to return to his hometown of Marquette for the remainder of his 27-year coaching career. LeDuc has also coached tennis, baseball, football and cross country.
“Gordy has stood the test of time and it will be fun to have him as an honorary coach,” Izzo recalled Tuesday. “It will mean everything to him.”
Izzo said another one of his former high school coaches, Tom Clark, will also be traveling to Marquette for Sunday’s game. He also said his former NMU teammate and MSU assistant coach Mike Garland will be in attendance.
Tightening by rotation
The Spartans, who went 20-15 and lost to North Carolina in the second round of the NCAA tournament in March, are already off to a strong start to the season with a 10-day, three-game trip in August in Spain.
Izzo substituted liberally and mixed his starting groups with international competitors to get a feel for combinations. But he believes Sunday’s game against the Wildcats, who went 22-11 and reached the Division 2 tournament last season, requires a slightly different approach.
“During the first replacement, I could opt for two groups. In Spain I did it a lot,” Izzo said. “But after that, I also have to start preparing for how it’s going to be in the game situation. And we’ll try to do some of that.”
Officially, MSU began preseason practices on September 24. But Izzo believes the 2-1 trip to Spain gives him a better idea of his new team ahead of the first exhibition test.
“I think the experience was good,” Izzo said, “because it gave us a little opportunity to see who can handle some pressure and who can’t. That was probably the main thing.
Contact Chris Solari: [email protected]. Follow him @chrissolari.
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For the first: Wildcats
Match : Spartans (20-15 last season) vs. Northern Michigan (22-11), exhibition.
Trick : 1 p.m. Sunday; Upper Dome, Marquette.
Television/radio: Big Ten Network; WXYT-FM (97.1).
Opening of the regular season: November 4, time to be determined: Monmouth; Breslin Center; Television to be determined.
This article was originally published on Detroit Free Press: Tom Izzo ‘Excited’ to Showcase Yooper’s Michigan State Hoops Roots
