EAST LANSING — Tom Izzo likes to joke that he’s never happy. About his players, his team, his coaching, the state of college basketball, the state of his profession – nothing is sacrosanct from his hypercriticism.
On the heels of a long road trip, on Thursday, Jan. 22, Izzo vented over two most recent frustrations: the NCAA and a television producer.
As has been the case multiple times this season, Izzo was asked Thursday, after Michigan State basketball practice, about his sport’s latest eligibility controversy. This one is the ongoing saga of Charles Bediako, most recently of the Motor City Cruise in the G League in Detroit, who was granted a temporary restraining order to return to Alabama and play Saturday against Tennessee despite having played professionally for the past three seasons.
And Izzo’s rant took indirect aim at Crimson Tide coach Nate Oats – who coached Romulus High School in Michigan for 12 seasons – as well as Baylor coach Scott Baylor, who controversially added former Detroit Pistons draft pick James Nnjai to his roster just after Christmas .
“I just get mad,” Izzo said. “I don’t follow it to worry about the cases. It’s pretty evident that I have no say, the coaches have no say. And coaches are doing what they want to do. … Utterly ridiculous. And yet, we have judges now doing it. We have Congress not jumping in. We have the NCAA with no say. So it’s the wild, wild west, so be prepared for anything.”
Izzo’s relationship with Oats goes back almost a quarter century, when Oats, a Wisconsin native was at Romulus and working Izzo’s summer camps at MSU. Oats was a frequent guest at MSU practices during that time, and Izzo reportedly also served as a résumé reference for Oats at one point.
Izzo also said last month he considered Drew “a good friend” through their long relationship and serving on NCAA committees together.
“I get a kick out of it, though – some of them are coaches that were calling and complaining last year about it,” Izzo said. “But, hey, when in Rome do like the Romans, I guess. That’s the way it is. I think that one [the Bediako ruling] supersedes the other jokes, the way it went. And I recruited Bediako.”
Izzo joked before the season, after Louisville was allowed to add former G League player London Johnson – an American who has yet to play for the Cardinals – that he might check in with some of his former players now in the NBA to see if they’d come back to MSU. On Thursday, there was no joking from Izzo on the subject.
“I’m just gonna keep my guys, I’m gonna keep being different,” Izzo said, adding seriousness to his intonation. “I’m gonna keep my guys. I’m going to the transfer portal for sure this spring – I’m going right to my locker room, and I’m gonna try to keep every frickin’ player I got.”
Mic’ed up
Izzo’s second gripe Thursday was about the viral video from FS1 during the 10th-ranked Spartans’ 68-52 win at Oregon on Tuesday night. The network had the 31st-year Hall of Fame coach mic’ed up for in-game access, and it showed a team huddle in which Izzo told sophomore guard Kur Teng “you can’t guard my mother.”
“They weren’t jokes on the Kur stuff,” Izzo said, but instead a motivational tactic meant more to get Teng focusing on the defensive struggles he had against Oregon. It was a repeat of Izzo’s issues with defense from MSU’s shooting guards all season. And he further explained how the interaction transpired – and the trust coaches give producers while mic’ed up.
“I want to make sure you guys understand something: Coaches have sayings and idiosyncrasies and things,” he said. “I must have said that 100 times. In all fairness and honesty, No. 1, I ain’t worried about Kur, because I told him that 100 times – I tell him that every practice.
“So because some [TV] producer kind of doesn’t do his job – and I hate to rip the producer – but we allow people in the huddle. Some huddles are gonna be different than others. That one was calm, so it wasn’t a big deal. That was calm – there wasn’t a lot of U.P. language in that one, so it was good. But you still pick and choose. I have some producers I would trust.”
The video went viral on social media during the game, and Izzo was asked about it afterward by a national reporter. His response also went viral, and he added to it Thursday.
“Kur heard it 100 times here,” Izzo said after Thursday’s practice. “And if he guarded better? He wouldn’t hear it.”
Later Thursday on his weekly radio show, Izzo gave Teng plenty of compliments.
“I mean, Kur didn’t quit the team because he can’t guard my mother,” Izzo said. “You know what? I bet you Kur works harder, too, because he’s a hell of a kid. A great kid, a helluva shooter. If he adds that part (defense) to his game, he’s gonna be a helluva player for himself and a helluva player for us.”
As for his 99-year-old mom, Dorothy, who lives in Wisconsin?
“She’s great. I think she’s working out now,” Izzo said. “I called her today, and she was seriously doing a little exercise program. I think I motivated her.”
And yes, Izzo was shown some of the AI-generated photos of Dorothy vs. Kur. He laughed about the images but also slipping in a tried-and-true jab: “I hate the social media.”
“My mom said I could fly on her coattails now that she’s more famous than I am,” Izzo said with a grin.
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tom Izzo blasts FS1 Michigan State basketball viral clip of Kur Teng
