A lion in winter vs. the rabbit chaser: As Tom Izzo reinforces his greatness at 70, new rival Dusty May hunts
Michigan State is again king of the Big Ten. Can Dusty May one day do for Michigan what Tom Izzo has for MSU? An under-appreciated rivalry gets a compelling reboot
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Hunched over, head bobbing at a quarter-note rhythm, jaw slightly dropped, eyes in constant scan. His hands clenched, tugging on the knees of his polyester pants. A whistle dangles around his neck.
Tom Izzo is exactly where he wants to be at 70 years old: overseeing yet another Michigan State practice.
Eventually, there's an inevitable mistake from one of his players. Izzo doesn't even think to use his whistle; he reflexively barks, and in a beat, the Hall-of-Famer is hoofing downcourt. It's two days before MSU's big road game against first-place Michigan and Izzo isn't satisfied by the lack of physicality in the painted area.
One of his guys backed off under the boards during a drill. I'm sitting too far away to hear Izzo's initial verbiage as he approaches the perpetrator, but after some quick one-sided discourse Izzo's final six words are enunciated loud and clear and they reverberate across the practice gym.
"KNOCK SOMEBODY ON THEIR F---ING ASS!!!"
If the point wasn't direct enough, about 25 minutes later Izzo scolds the same six words again to another player, only more drawn out and a little louder this time, to make sure the message is effectively punctuated — and no longer ignored.
These are portraits of Izzo as you likely imagine him, but it's also important to note that there are many encouraging moments over the course of a two-hour Michigan State practice. He smiles plenty, he loves on his guys. But, yeah, he's an absolute red ass. These are the times and spaces wherein Izzo's players are hardened and sharpened. At one point he gets on one of his guards with comical exasperation: "One good game? One good game and now you're going to take a week off? One good game?!"
For Izzo, coaching has meant "living my dream." It took three years for a young Izzo to convince Jud Heathcote to hire him as a low-level grunt guy on a $4,800 salary. He arrived in East Lansing with a broken jaw (softball injury) in 1983 and never left. Few have been able to do what Izzo has done in this regard: He walks the line of being so consistently, publicly fiery about the performance of his players while being lauded by some for the big-hearted intentions that embolden his oft-incandescent behavior.
For all that comes with being the coach of one of the biggest programs in the sport — and how that job has changed, drastically, as Izzo's gotten older — the guy from Iron Mountain, Michigan, has kept his motivations simple.
It's about winning.
That bore you? Too bad. Sounds cliche? There's the door. Doesn't inspire you? Then you're nobody Izzo wants to spend time with, let alone coach or work alongside.
"There's a lot of ways to win games. I don't think there's a lot of ways to win championships," Izzo told CBS Sports. "It's hard for winning to be number one for a lot of players. And what winning usually brings is all those other things they want."
The outcome of every game, every practice drill, every day on the job, every facet to why he still devotes the majority of his life to the vocation comes back to the fundamental charge of beating the other guy. While it is not the only reason he is still doing this into his eighth decade on Earth, it is far and away the biggest. Few coaches have soldered their identity of What It Takes To Win, down to the mitochondrial level, like Izzo.
"Over the last five years, (the) whole world has changed — unaccountability and everything — I've had to adjust to that," Izzo said. "People perceive me as a guy that's getting on somebody, and I never understood that, I really didn't. I mean my own kids, they don't do what they're supposed to do, my job's to hold them accountable. I don't look at players any different."
This approach to coaching, whatever you want to call it, just don't use "old school." Izzo hates that.
"It irritates me, because old school means you don't want to adjust or change," he said. "I want to adjust and change. I just don't want to lose the principles of what I know it takes to be great."
Get Izzo going on those principles and he's in fifth gear in seconds. His decades-long friendship with Nick Saban is well known at this point. Even more than a year after Saban retired, Izzo still leans on those philosophies that turned Saban into a mythical-type figure in the annals of American sports coaches.
"I heard everybody say, he's never happy. I heard everybody say, he's hard to play for. Heard everybody say he's hard to work for. Yeah, you idiots. That's because he's trying to do something that only one half of 1% of the world can do," Izzo said. "The biggest thing that I hear now that bothers me — and I'll never change it, I'll never not let it bother me — is winning AS important, or are all these other things more important than winning? And when I figure out that they are?"
Izzo takes his right hand, lifts it to his forehead and salutes.
"Sayonara."
In the past couple of years there had been murmurs in college basketball that maybe retirement was coming for Izzo the way it caught coaches older and younger than he: Roy Williams, Jim Boeheim, Mike Krzyzewski, Jay Wright and Tony Bennett. He reiterated in a two-hour sit-down with CBS Sports that retirement isn't around the corner.
"The truth of the matter is, I think I'm healthier than I was five years ago," Izzo said. "They say that you'll know when it's time. It doesn't feel like it's time, not for me."
Izzo semi-regularly receives calls from a few guys — some active, some retired — who tell him he can't quit. The game needs him.
"I don't think anybody understands what it's like, day to day, to think somebody's calling your kid, and all of a sudden he turns into an asshole in practice, and for just no reason," Izzo said. "I've said these kids can't play at this level half pregnant. You're either in or you're out, man. Not even if you want to win a championship, but if you want to just ... exist and win games."
Michigan State has had a lot of turnover as a university, and yet Izzo's still there. He is the embodiment of, and really the spokesperson for, that place more than probably anyone ever. He's outlasted multiple iterations of athletic directors, presidents, vice presidents, football coaches, you name it. He remains invested because, over the past year or so, he's come to terms with letting go on some issues in college sports that he'd like to see fixed, but doesn't believe will be by the end of the decade.
"I've found a way to say I'm going to try to adjust," he said. "I'm going to try to do the best job I can for my players, but I'm not going to fixate over it every day. ... I'm passionate about it. I'm not obsessed with it anymore. I know I can't change it."
What he does fixate on are the practice plans, the game tape he watches in the office — then at his house every night, often well past midnight. When his players are enjoying college life away from the facility, Izzo is thinking about how he can make them better.
MSU (25-5) is really good yet again. Maybe even great. This doesn't just magically occur because a well-known coach who's made every single NCAA Tournament since 1998 happens to be walking the halls. It's thousands of hours every year devoted to working, wanting, willing winning seasons into existence.
Four months ago, MSU received the seventh-most votes among Big Ten teams in the preseason AP poll; the Spartans were unranked. Over the past three months they have wormed their way up in the rankings. This week they sit at No. 8, and on Thursday night clinched clinched the standalone regular season Big Ten championship with a 91-84 road win at Iowa. It's Izzo's 11th regular-season Big Ten crown, tying him with Bob Knight and Ward "Piggy" Lambert for most in Big Ten history.
The Spartans didn't even give Michigan hope for a share of the title when the teams meet Sunday. Izzo cannot stand losing to Michigan, and for most of his career he's avoided the feeling, owning a 35-16 record against the Wolverines.
Remarkably, this year marks the 22nd time in 30 seasons that Izzo's Spartans will finish above the Wolverines in the Big Ten.
It's astounding what this team has done over the last month, staring down the toughest schedule in the Big Ten and refusing to blink. MSU responded to an unexpected home loss to Indiana on Feb. 11 with five straight wins, all of them against top 25-level teams: Illinois (road), Purdue, Michigan (road), Maryland (road), Wisconsin. Iowa isn't in that class, but it was another road game and it went MSU's way in tidal wave fashion after the Spartans hung 61 second half points on the Hawkeyes.
What awaits at the Breslin Center on Sunday? The stakes may be lowered, but you'd be a fool to think Dusty May isn't champing at the bit to exact revenge and send MSU into the Big Ten Tournament with a loss, solidifying Michigan as the clear-cut No. 2 team in the league in the process.
