jud-heathcote-1994

Former Michigan State basketball coach Jud Heathcote coaches from the sidelines during a 1994 exhibition game against Athletes in Action at the Breslin Center.

(MLive fiel photo | Kathy Kieliszewski)

EAST LANSING -- It's a difficult and often trivial pursuit to rank a program's wins in order of greatness and magnitude.

It's especially nonsensical the closer you are in time to the game you're ranking.

But if there's one person who's most qualified to qualify Spartan basketball, it's Jud Heathcote. And the former Michigan State coach, who's not exactly known for showering his protege Tom Izzo with compliments, had some strong words regarding Izzo's most recent win -- a 71-69 overtime victory at Iowa Tuesday night.

"When Tom is through coaching," Heathcote said Wednesday on Izzo's radio show, "he'll look back at his greatest victories and I'm sure that win last night is going to be somewhere in the top 10.

"To go in to Carver-Hawkeye Arena, win in overtime against a great club with the patchwork lineup that he's using, is a testimony to his great coaching ability."

A momentary applause erupted from the show's audience before Heathcote interjected, "Don't get the big head, Tom."

Jud Heathcote, seen here in his 1979 frustration, asked Tom Izzo Wednesday night if he was trying to kill him with all the overtime games the Spartans have had this season.

Heathcote's "patchwork lineup" remark was in reference to the fact that Izzo has used 10 different starting lineups in Michigan State's 21 games and entered the Iowa game without starters Adreian Payne and Branden Dawson.

It's a situation that even Heathcote has grown tired of some 2,000 miles away watching in Spokane, Washington.

"Is Adreian going to play ever again in my lifetime?" Heathcote asked, the answer of course being that the senior forward is -- for now -- expected to return next Wednesday versus Penn State after missing the past six games with a sprained foot.



Heathcote coached the Spartans from 1976 through 1995, winning a national championship in 1979 and three Big Ten championships. He retired in 1995 after 19

seasons with a career mark of 340-220, leaving the program to his longtime assistant, Tom Izzo.

Heathcote says that while it's tough for him to travel like he used after he was injured in a fall three summers ago, he still watches every Michigan State basketball game he can and every Gonzaga game as well, insisting that the Big Ten Network was a better invention than the wheel or the jet engine.

But after watching Tuesday's game against Iowa, the same game he called one of Izzo's best, he still had a bone to pick with his old assistant.

"I want to know why we have so many overtime games when I'm watching with a bad heart?" Heathcote said. "Tom, are you trying to kill me or what?"

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