The evolution of Tom Izzo

INDIANAPOLIS – When Zachary Hicks got to Northern Michigan from Detroit Southeastern to play basketball in the fall of 1974, he quickly learned about obsession.

A 5-foot-9 sophomore point guard named Tom Izzo taught him. Izzo attacked every practice drill, fought through every screen, approached every game like it was the most important he'd ever played, and eventually turned his meager physical gifts into All-America honors.

Izzo's fire was overwhelming at times, Hicks said, but he also managed to be a friend to everyone on the team. He was funny and engaging when he wasn't competing.

"The most intense individual I've ever met," said Hicks, who is now in his 23rd year as founder and pastor of Faith Clinic Church of God in Christ in Detroit. "Loved to win, hated to lose and would not accept anything but your maximum effort. But off the court? The guy would give you his shirt. Polar opposite. We loved him, man."

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That was, and is, the contrast of Izzo. He's 60 now, in his 20th season as Michigan State's men's basketball coach, leading the Spartans into the Final Four for the seventh time Saturday when they play Duke in the national semifinals in Indianapolis.

He has added again to a coaching run that ranks among the best in college basketball and Michigan sports history. The seven Final Fours are tied for fourth all-time and tied for second among active coaches, behind only the 12 of Duke's Mike Krzyzewski.

Krzyzewski has successfully lured 60 McDonald's All-Americans — the gold standard of college basketball recruiting — in his 35 years at Duke, while Izzo has landed 12 in his 20 years. The intensity, the fire, the refusal to overlook the smallest of mistakes or the briefest of lulls explains how Izzo has compensated for the talent difference.

"I still think there's only one way to get it done," Izzo said, "and that one way is you better be spilling it every minute, or you're not going to make it once you get this deep in the tournament."

The art is in keeping the people around him, now 40 years his junior, devoted to him amid the screams.

"It's a delicate balance and he probably does it as well as anyone, especially in this day and age," said MSU associate head strength coach Mike Vorkapich, who has worked with Izzo's teams for all but one of Izzo's 20 seasons. "People are a lot more sensitive to criticism than they used to be. We coach guys hard here. Guys get the brutal honesty from us. You don't see that at many places anymore."

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The honesty can be brutal among the staffers, too. Mt. Izzo can erupt on anyone.

"If you've worked here on the staff, you've been fired," Vorkapich said. "From (Tom) Crean to (Brian) Gregory to (Doug) Wojcik to (Kevin) Pauga to (Matt) Larson. We've all been fired."

Many times.

"(Shoot), once a week," MSU associate head coach Dwayne Stephens joked.

Just as with Izzo's players, though, relationships create the conditions for frank conversations.

"That's a big thing I've learned from him," MSU graduate manager Drew Valentine, older brother of MSU junior guard Denzel Valentine, said of his two seasons on the staff. "He spends so much time getting to know everyone, inside and out."

And he'd rather not have the only voice reverberating off the walls. Izzo talks often about the value of a "player-coached team" and credits Denzel Valentine and Travis Trice for doing much to take over this one.

In both of last weekend's victories at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, N.Y., to reach the Final Four, MSU employees other than Izzo had big halftime moments. Stephens got after the players with an elevated voice for terrible defense and "selfish" offense with MSU down, 40-32, to Louisville, before a comeback and 76-70 overtime victory to make it to Indianapolis.

"He's intense," Stephens said of Izzo. "But we all are at different moments, you know? That's just part of being competitive. We get after our guys and our guys have responded. And it's been awesome."

At halftime of MSU's Sweet 16 win over Oklahoma, most of the time involved Izzo unloading on senior forward Branden Dawson for insufficient effort — a common theme in Dawson's career that hasn't been as common this season.

Dawson defended himself. Valentine joined Izzo in demanding more. Dawson kept defending himself. Vorkapich, who rarely speaks at such times, finally felt compelled to contribute.

"Everybody sees it, BJ!" he yelled, using Dawson's nickname. "This isn't just coach picking on you."

Dawson picked it up in the second half. MSU came back to win. Later that night, Izzo came up to Vorkapich and mumbled: "Hey, that was good."

Most of the people around Izzo have been with him for a long time. He recruited Stephens to play for Jud Heathcote at MSU, and Stephens has been on Izzo's coaching staff since 2003. Assistant coach Mike Garland played with Izzo at Northern Michigan and has been with him since 2007, after a previous stint from 1996-2003.

Executive secretary Lori Soderberg has been with MSU basketball since 1976. Recently retired recruiting secretary Beth Marinez was there for 25 years.

Equipment manager Dave Pruder has been doing it since 1989. Pauga, the director of basketball operations, started as a student manager in 2000. Larson has been the team's spokesman since 1999. Assistant video coordinator Doug Herner has been in that role — and the role of Izzo's sounding board — for 11 seasons after 22 of coaching Lansing Sexton High.

And then there's the official good cop to Izzo's bad cop.

"This is a family," said Lupe Izzo, who is in her 23rd year of marriage to the coach. "It's not something we just say, it's something we live."

Lupe said she has counseled many a player who was struggling at the time with the Tom Izzo way. Zach Randolph and Derrick Nix, in particular, come to mind.

"It was hard for them at first," she said.

Lupe tells young players what their veteran teammates tell them — listen to what Izzo is saying, not how he's saying it. In some instances she reinforces her husband, such as a time former player A.J. Granger got in trouble and came to her.

"It was the type of thing where you can't get through to the dad so you go to the mom," Lupe said of Granger. "I told him, 'You're gonna have to own this.'"

It's a group of public figures brought together by basketball and living real lives. And the reality of Tom Izzo is that he's aging and, perhaps just a bit, softening.

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As MSU advances deeper into the postseason, the media crowds get larger. A good chunk of a section of the Breslin Center in East Lansing was filled with reporters Tuesday as Izzo opened more than an hour of his practice.

Close observers could have picked up some of MSU's strategy for the Duke game, and everyone heard Izzo as he raised his voice to demand more effort at times, better execution at others. Many snickers have come from that section of the stands over the years in response to the creative, profane combinations of words Izzo has yelled at his players.

That openness, rare in college sports these days, yielded an instance last season in which then-freshman Gavin Schilling had a rough practice, took Izzo's heat and was crying after practice and unable to speak with reporters.

"A bunch of emotions just built up and I was frustrated, I let the emotions get the best of me," Schilling said this week of that day, which ended with something reporters didn't see — Izzo calmly explaining himself to Schilling.

"He means well," Schilling said. "He just wants the best for you."

And yes, the approach has changed some over the years.

"He's still as intense and passionate, but as he gets older I think he handles things better," Lupe Izzo said of her husband.

"It used to be back in the day, everything was an iron fist," Garland said. "It's not always that way now. Just because of age, maturity and wisdom."

Dawson said recently that Izzo has "mellowed" since his 2011 arrival at MSU.

"Mellowed? Of course it's not like the (Mateen) Cleaves days," Izzo said this week of the senior point guard who led him to his only national title, in 2000. "Those things back then were fistfights. That's the way it was then. You look at some of the guys I admired then — John Thompson, Bo Schembechler, John Chaney, Bobby Knight, Gene Keady — it was the way of the world."

Cleaves and Izzo clashed famously and often, yet they remain close today. That's true of many other former players — Idong Ibok (2005-09), who can't get back to his family in Nigeria, still has a room in the Izzo house and spends holidays with them — and that's the idea.

"There's not one player who has left this program who Tom isn't connected with," Lupe said.

Just this year, Izzo scheduled an exhibition game against the Master's College of Santa Clarita, Calif., so Russell Byrd could be honored one last time at Breslin. Byrd transferred to the Master's College in the off-season for his final year of eligibility.

Big man Alex Gauna also opted against his final season at MSU, retiring from basketball and entering fatherhood and the working world. Izzo called him and asked him whether he wanted to join the team for the first NCAA tournament weekend in Charlotte, N.C.

The day before MSU opened with a win over Georgia, Pruder sat in a remote part of the locker room, shook his head and said of Izzo's Gauna gesture: "That's just freaking awesome. That's why he can do what he does."

Vorkapich said Izzo "does a lot of things for people no one will ever know."

No one knew at the time that this MSU team, unranked for most of the season and one of the lightest on talent that Izzo has coached, would make it all the way to the Final Four. The journey has been among his favorites, the scene after MSU's win over Louisville perhaps the most stirring since he got MSU to the Final Four at Detroit's Ford Field in 2009.

One of the most gratifying parts of that run for Izzo and Garland was the presence of Hicks, right up front in the Ford Field stands. They thought they were going to lose him in the summer of 2008.

"He was on his deathbed, about to lose his church," Garland said.

Hicks developed severe vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels, in his lower extremities. He said he had "gaping wounds" up and down his legs, couldn't walk for six weeks and couldn't work for months.

Garland organized an event to save the church. Izzo rounded up as many friends as he could gather, served as the keynote speaker and raised nearly $50,000.

In the spring, with Hicks, 59, on the mend, MSU got him to Ford Field. And when it was over, he got a Final Four ring.

"I get emotional about it even now," said Hicks, who has fully recovered. "Nobody had ever showed me that kind of love before, ever in my life. Think about it. This guy can get 30 grand for a speaking engagement, he changes his whole schedule around and does everything he can do to save my life. Who does that? No one except a true humanitarian. But nobody sees that side of Tom. They see him winning basketball games."

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495: Career victories, most in MSU history and third-most for coach at a Big Ten institution

233: Big Ten victories, third all-time behind Bobby Knight (353) and Gene Keady (265)

83: Percentage of Izzo players completing eligibility who have graduated

60: His age (born Jan. 30, 1955)

32: Years working at MSU

20: Years as MSU's head coach

18: Current NCAA tournament streak, the second-longest active streak for a coach in the nation (trailing Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski's 19), the fourth-longest in NCAA history and longest in Big Ten history

15: Izzo players who have been drafted by the NBA

13: Wins as the lower seed in the NCAA tournament, most all-time

12: McDonald's All-Americans signed by Izzo, including incoming 2015 recruit Deyonta Davis

11: Big Ten championships of some sort, with seven regular-season titles and four tournament titles

8: National coach of the year awards

7: Final Fours, tied for fourth all-time and the most in the nation in the past 17 years – Izzo and Krzyzewski are the only coaches to reach seven Final Fours in a 17-year span since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985

2: Children, Raquel and Steven

1: National title, in 2000

Contact Joe Rexrode: jrexrode@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @joerexrode. Check out his MSU blog at freep.com/heyjoe.