Michigan State coach Tom Izzo speaks to the media on Tuesday, April 2, 2019, in East Lansing. Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press
Twenty eight years ago, Tom Izzo hung up the phone, sat down, and cried.
He had just been informed that a high school star named Chris Webber, whom he had been recruiting for years, had chosen archrival Michigan instead.
Izzo wasn’t even the head coach at Michigan State then, just the top associate to a firebrand named Jud Heathcote. But he cried over losing Webber. It mattered that much. In his mind he wondered what would happen next.