20 years after winning his first national championship, Tom Izzo is still chasing his second. It remains his driving motivation as he nears the end of his career.
"Even when I was there he was talking about it," former Michigan State star Paul Davis told 97.1 The Ticket's Podcast The Time That. "Like Tiger has his 19 majors, that's coach's thing. He's done everything else."
Davis, who played for Izzo from 2002-06, believes the legendary coach will take a few more whacks at it and then call it a career. Asked how many years Izzo, 64, has left, Davis said, "He won’t be coaching by 2025, so I’d say three years, give or take one."
The upcoming season, Izzo's 25th as head coach, might be his best shot at that second championship. With most of last year's Final Four team returning, the Spartans are
one of the early favorites to win it all.
Second title or not, Izzo won't step down without finding the right successor. In Davis' opinion, former Michigan State assistant Brian Gregory, who coached under Jud Heathcote from 1990-95 and under Izzo the year after that, could be the one. Gregory, who also served as a consultant for Izzo during the 2016-17 season, is currently the head coach at South Florida.
Either way, said Davis, Izzo will likely go with an outside hire.
"If he won the second, I don’t think he’d jump ship right away because he needs to find who he's going to hand the keys over to," Davis said. "I can't see him doing it to anybody on staff. Those are some of the greatest basketball minds and coaches in Dwayne Stephens and Dane Fife, but my vote would be Brian Gregory. Just because I know what kind of coach he is, but obviously you have to deal with so many other thing as a head coach at a major university. If it was just basketball and just coaching, Dwayne or Dane would be great. But there's just so much other BS that you have to deal with that I think Brian Gregory would handle.
"And coach has said privately that he really wants to see Michigan State (recover). A lot of these issues that were going on, he wants to see the healing process (take place) and make sure that he also has a hand in helping put Michigan State where it needs to be, even outside of basketball."
The healing process is something Izzo spoke about frequently in the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal and during the tumultuous 2017-18 season when the basketball program was fighting allegations of systemic sexual assault.
As for the possibility of Izzo one day moving to the NBA, Davis said it's highly unlikely. Once Izzo is done at Michigan State, so will he be done coaching.
On the first time Izzo came after him on the sideline: "Probably the most public first one was when we played Michigan my freshman year. ... A ball went over my head, they scored two points, we lost by two points. But coach told me in the huddle, 'If we lose by two points, I’m going to string you up by the rafters,' or something. We were down by five with two seconds to go and then Chris Hill gets the ball and throws a hook shot behind his back, hits the backboard, goes in for three points, we lose by two. So I'm sitting in the locker room and coach beelines it for me and I think I probably just blacked out from there. But that was very different from what I had experienced. My dad was very tough, but as far as coaches I never really had somebody challenge me like that. It was really trying to figure out what the meaning was or why or, 'Okay, do you really suck that bad?' Looking back, you can easily understand why he did it, but there was never a day, win lose or draw, that he was not at that level."
On Izzo's coaching style: "He never says why he coaches the way he does, he never explains why he challenged you. He does talk about it calmly in video the next day to the team, just about what his goal is for everybody. But I can't count the (number of) times where we were in his basement for five or six hours just talking, while his family came home from school, ate dinner and went to bed and never saw him because he was down there talking to me. That’s when you know that, listen, he’s going to push me because he knows what it takes to get guys to the next level. You're a stupid freshman that thinks you know everything, but you don’t know what it really takes A) to win a championship, but B) to have a successful career at the next level.
On Izzo making his players wear football pads for practice: "Yes, twice. We saw the managers wheel out the cart, and I had never put on a football helmet or pad in my life. It was my first time putting on pads. And then we play our war drill, so it’s shooting, boxing out and rebounding, and nobody can shoot, nobody can see, someone’s going to dislocate a shoulder. We’re having fun with it, but we are definitely hitting and I think the message gets across. But I don’t believe we do that anymore, for obvious reasons."
On his and Izzo's hatred for Michigan: "When we play Michigan, that’s the only game you’re allowed to win by one and the next day the film session will be happy. It’s whatever it takes. Michigan week, we put jerseys with names of their players on our scout team. Everybody has a different level of focus, every little detail is harped on more. There is a massive hatred from me, from all the Spartans, from coach Izzo. But I believe over the course of, really, the past 10 or 15 years, there's been a bigger respect between the teams."
On how Juwan Howard will fare at Michigan: "Juwan’s one of the nicest guys. I worked out with him back in the day. I think he’s going to be great for recruits. I think he’s going to be great for player development. I don’t know how he’ll be in in-game decisions and situations, because when he came to be a great NBA coach, LeBron or D-Wade was on the team. That’s not a knock to him. It's just there's so many things that happen in a college game that are so different than an NBA game, so that'll be interesting to see."
Davis, who spent four seasons in the NBA, now works as a financial planner for MassMutual Great Lakes in Southfield. For questions or advice, contact him via email:
Pauldavis2@financialguide.com.
