From my own undergrad days as an aspiring young coach, to our years together building the beginnings of his Michigan State program, the lessons Tom Izzo taught to me are long and deep and forever rooted.

Here’s one that burrowed deep inside and never left: He was in Hawaii on a summer trip and classroom issues cropped up for one of our Michigan State players. I had spent the afternoon and evening trying to track down the young man, but couldn’t find him. Now, I had to call Tom and tell him what was happening.

He was furious.

“I can’t let you be in charge of anything,” Tom told me. “I should never leave town.”

I’ll never forget standing in my house and feeling those words drop into the pit of my stomach. At first, I thought: “Hey, this isn’t my fault.” And then, I realized the message. You do the assignment – and you don’t stop until it’s finished. If I had searched eight hours, I should’ve stayed out for 12 hours. Get the job done. No excuses.

In that moment, I knew this: For the rest of my life, I never wanted someone else to say that to me – especially from someone I loved and respected like Tom Izzo. It drove me every day.

In those moments, Tom never feared telling you exactly what you needed to hear. Always, there was love in his bite. Never an agenda, though. Never manipulation. Tom is tenacious in his pursuit of excellence, and that’s true as a basketball coach, a father, a husband, a son and a friend.

I was an undergraduate at Central Michigan, coaching high school ball, when I met Tom Izzo in the mid-1980s. The first thing you remember about him? At that time, the moustache. You could never forget that moustache. I sat in the balcony in Jenison Field House [at Michigan State] and watched Tom and assistant Mike Deane working under coach Jud Heathcote on the practice floor. It was inspiring. The energy, the passion, the detail. It only further solidified my dream to become a college coach, too. We became fast friends.

When he was still an assistant to Jud, Tom let me come on a recruiting trip to the old Five-Star Camp in Pennsylvania and on to Indiana, too. He paid for everything: the food, the hotel rooms. He didn’t have to do any of it. We would talk for hours about recruiting, filling notebooks with conversations about philosophies and how to build a recruiting strategy. Eventually, I was hired as a graduate assistant coach at Michigan State under Coach Heathcote and Izzo, and returned as a full-time assistant years later once Tom succeeded Coach Heathcote after his retirement.

Our first summer together on the recruiting trail, it was difficult. Sanctions limited us to only one coach on the staff traveling on the road. Tom committed to do it. He conducted the evaluations of players across the country. We had to be in constant contact and communication. We had to share every bit of information, every day, to stay in lockstep in recruiting. Looking back, it was one of the most productive recruiting summers we ever had.

Tom Izzo and Tom Crean share a moment in 2013. (AP) More

With Tom, he wasn’t always comfortable with delegating things. He was committed to mastering every part of the program: the X’s and O’s, the game prep, the scouting, the recruiting organization, the camps, the administration.

He wanted it done right, and he had to do it himself until he had the full trust in everyone else. His attention to detail was extraordinary. He felt incredible pressure to succeed, and we felt incredible pressure to help him succeed. It wasn’t that he just wanted to succeed for himself, but as much for Michigan State, too. He loved the school. He wanted to win for the Spartans. It’s one of the ultimate reasons he’s never left, because his investment is so deep into the campus and community, so unwavering.

In our third season together on the Michigan State staff, we had lost to the University of Detroit – for a third straight time – and dropped to 5-3. All around town, there were doubts about us: Could we win there? Did we know what we were doing?

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