Tom Izzo ‘fired up’ to show off his Yooper roots to Michigan State with NMU scrimmage

EAST LANSING – Hours before the Detroit Pistons and Phoenix Suns came to his house for an exhibition game, Tom Izzo stepped out of Breslin Center and into Munn Ice Arena in perfect Michigan State athletics fashion.

A basketball coach with a football building named after him getting displaced to a hockey arena named after a legendary football coach.

Yet the primary focus on Tuesday, in a week filled with unique opportunities and experiences for his Spartans, was Izzo going home. And not back across the street to his arena.

To the Upper Peninsula. To Marquette. To his roots and the foundation of where and how he built MSU basketball into the national power equivalent to what Munn did for the football program.

The Spartans will fly to the UP for their unofficial opener, a sold-out exhibition game with Izzo’s alma mater Northern Michigan. Tipoff between the perennial powerhouse and his former Division II program at the Superior Dome in Marquette is 1 p.m. Sunday, and the game will be televised on Big Ten Network.

“I’m fired up to bring my team up there. I’m fired up to see the people. I’m fired up to maybe do something for Northern,” said Izzo, a 1977 NMU graduate. “I’m fired up 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’ve seen where those guys were from. They never go where I’m from.

“And now they’re gonna get a chance, and maybe that helps them understand me a little bit better.”

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It will be MSU’s first game in the U.P. since a 91-59 regular-season win over Izzo and the Wildcats on Dec. 16, 1974. He was a sophomore on that NMU team and went on to become a Division II All-American point guard his senior year before embarking on a Hall of Fame coaching career that began at the high school level in the U.P.

Along with the rare visit from MSU, Northern Michigan will retire Izzo’s No. 10 on Sunday.

After two years as head coach at Ishpeming High, Izzo returned to Marquette and served as an assistant coach for the Wildcats for four years, then moved to East Lansing to join Jud Heathcote’s staff and never left. He served as an assistant from 1983-95, then took over the program when Heathcote retired after the 1994-95 season.

Now 69 years old, Izzo enters his 30th season at the helm as MSU’s all-time winningest head coach, with the longest NCAA tournament streak in Division I history (26 and counting), and the 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 has been a long journey from his hometown of Iron Mountain, 80 miles southwest of Marquette. Izzo said he wants it “to be an educational trip for my players, along with one that’ll mean a lot to me.”

“I wanted to do two things with this,” Izzo said. “I always wanted to try to give a little back to the places I’ve been and people that 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 do believe we’re in too much of an entitled society right now, and there’s not a lot entitled up there.

“And that’s why I love it, because I have no interest in entitlement.”

Honorary coach

Izzo announced Tuesday that his former high school coach, Gordy LeDuc, will serve as MSU’s honorary captain Sunday.

LeDuc spent only one year at Iron Mountain, but it was a memorable one for the Mountaineers – and a famously pivotal moment in Izzo’s life. One that happened at NMU’s old Hedgcock Fieldhouse more than 50 years ago.

Trailing by a point in the 1972 Upper Peninsula regional finals against rival West Iron County, with a spot in the state quarterfinals at stake, Mountaineers junior point guard Tommy Izzo stepped to the free-throw line for the front end 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 tear-filled aftermath.

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 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 379-211 basketball record at six different high schools, leaving Iron Mountain to return to his hometown of Marquette for the rest of his 27-year coaching career. LeDuc also coached tennis, baseball, football and cross country.

“Gordy has withstood the test of time, and it’ll be fun to have him as an honorary coach,” Izzo recalled Tuesday. “It’ll mean the world to him.”

Izzo said another of his former high school coaches, Tom Clark, also will make the trek to Marquette for Sunday’s game. He also said his former NMU backcourt mate and MSU assistant coach, Mike Garland, will be in attendance.

Rotation tightening

The Spartans, who went 20-15 and lost to North Carolina in the second round of the NCAA tournament in March, already got a jumpstart on the season with a 10-day, three-game August trip to Spain.

Izzo substituted liberally and mixed up his starting groups against international competition to get a feel for combinations. But he feels Sunday’s game against the Wildcats, who went 22-11 and made the Division 2 tournament last season, requires a little different approach.

“The first substitution, I might go for two groups. In Spain, I did that a lot,” Izzo said. “But after that, I also gotta 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 practice Sept. 24. But Izzo believes the 2-1 trip to Spain gives him a better feel on his new-look roster heading into 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 who can’t. That was probably the main thing.”

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.

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For openers: Wildcats

Matchup: Spartans (20-15 last season) vs. Northern Michigan (22-11), exhibition.

Tipoff: 1 p.m. Sunday; Superior Dome, Marquette.

TV/radio: Big Ten Network; WXYT-FM (97.1).

Regular-season opener: Nov. 4, Time TBD: Monmouth; Breslin Center; TV TBD.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tom Izzo ‘fired up’ to show off Yooper roots to Michigan State hoops