Tom Izzo knows Michigan game can help Michigan State heal, but some things are bigger than rivalries

EAST LANSING — Tom Izzo, the Hall of Fame basketball coach, vanished for nearly an hour. So did his vitriol for Michigan State’s rival Michigan.

In his place at the podium inside Breslin Center stood Tom Izzo the father. The teacher. The concerned citizen.

For 45 minutes Thursday afternoon, Izzo parsed through 72 hours of frightening moments, raw emotions and hope for the future of the place he’s called home for 40 years in the wake of Monday night’s campus shooting that left three students dead and five others wounded.

“We've had a lot of help from some mental health professionals that I think really helped me,” Izzo said Thursday, a day after giving an emotional speech at a vigil on campus Wednesday night. “They felt that if (MSU’s basketball team) played it would help not only themselves, the team, but maybe the campus heal a little better. And so we agreed that would be our battle cry.

“We also know everybody grieves different and everybody processes trauma in a million different ways. I've gone through so many different highs and lows that I, too, am learning new things. But like I said last night, whatever you're feeling is valid. I wouldn't have said that a couple of years ago. I guess I'm maturing with age. I have a better understanding right now that not everybody processes things the same way, whether you're a fan, a coach, a media member, a player or just a student. And that leads us to where we are now.”

The school announced earlier Thursday afternoon the Spartans (16-9, 8-6 Big Ten) will travel to Ann Arbor on Saturday to play their second game of the season against the rival Wolverines (14-12, 8-7). Tipoff is 8 p.m. at Crisler Center, with a number of tributes planned throughout the evening to honor the victims of Monday’s shooting at MSU.

Izzo tried at times to steer the conversation back to basketball, but he also admitted he realized the gravity of the tragedy would occupy most of his questions and comments. It was hard not to, and it kept coming back to his myriad of feelings about what happened and how to move forward — as a university, a community, a state and a nation — beyond just his team and what happens on the court Saturday.

“There’s some things that aren’t rivalries. There’s some things that are bigger than the game,” Izzo said. “The game is gonna be really important to me, as it has been for all 28 years I've been here. But there'll be a little asterisk on it. And I'm gonna have to do a good job of holding my emotions, their emotions. Everybody's emotions.

“And it'll be another good life lesson. When it's over, that'll be one of the things we talk about right in the locker room. Win or lose.”

Izzo revealed during his speech Wednesday that his son, Steven, a senior walk-on player for his team, encountered the scene of the shooting in its immediate aftermath. He explained further Thursday that Steven drove up to the MSU Student Union to pick up his girlfriend a little before her class finished around 8:30 p.m. The first shots were fired in nearby Berkey Hall at 8:18 p.m., with another shooting shortly thereafter in the Union. Police rushed to his car and told him to get away.

Steven Izzo drove to Breslin Center and called his father. Tom Izzo was just over a mile away to the north at Reno’s East bar and restaurant finishing his radio show at 8 p.m. He told his son to barricade himself in place, and eventually some of the MSU basketball graduate assistants and video staff got Steven, and they all went to the alumni locker room in the bowels of the arena and stayed there until around 1 a.m. Tuesday morning after MSU Police lifted its shelter-in-place order after the gunman was found nearly 4 miles away in north Lansing.

GETTING HELP:Crisis therapists cleared their schedules to help MSU students, faculty

“I kept saying I'm gonna go pick him up, and they said, 'No, you can't do that.' And that was a little difficult,” Izzo said. “But I'm in no way shape or form the only like some of those parents whose kids have been shot or killed or who were right there in the classroom when he came in. But it was fairly traumatizing for Steven. I thought he was OK, and then yesterday, he had some moments and some people really helped him out. So I was greatly appreciative of that. …

“My son was in a car and he pulled up there. But there's a lot of kids that were in the classroom. I don't know they go back in.”

In the meantime, Garrett Briningstool, Izzo’s basketball chief of staff, got in touch with the rest of the Spartans’ players, managers and their parents.

“It was such a bombardment,” Izzo recalled. “We were all trying to figure out what was going on. … There's certain things that there's no book for. I've been through a lot of things here, but somehow, some way, they're never quite the same. And so I have no book that tells me how to handle something like that.”

On Tuesday morning, Izzo brought his team to his house for some breakfast and to discuss the situation and what help players and staff might need to emotionally handle the aftermath of the shooting. By then, MSU’s game scheduled for Wednesday night against Minnesota already had been postponed.

That began the process of deciding what would happen next, with Saturday’s game against the Wolverines and other athletic events in limbo. Eventually, the decision was made by the players and greenlit by athletic director Alan Haller to play in Ann Arbor.

Izzo said he never discussed postponing the second meeting of the season with U-M but added, “I'm sure the ADs and presidents did."

“As they say, the world keeps turning. And one way to get back to some normality is to make things more normal,” Izzo said. “And unfortunately, we've had a lot of things in the last 10 years that have given us a blueprint for this, whether it be 9/11 way back or whether it be some other things that have happened where I think you've just got to figure out a way to honor the people that were senselessly killed. And yet our way of being able to do that is to play the game. And there'll be nobody forgotten. …

“As we looked at it and in discussing this with our team, it was clear they wanted to get back on the floor. And I think that you think back that many tragedies, sometimes sports can really lift you a little bit.”

Izzo said his team did not work out Tuesday but did Wednesday, a practice he called “awful. … To no blame for anybody. We just, we just didn't have it.” The Spartans practiced again Thursday afternoon, which Izzo deemed “wasn't off-the-charts, but it was damned good.”

Throughout the week, Izzo said he has heard from a number of people, including ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg, who was coaching at Virginia Tech when it had its mass shooting in 2007. Former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was among the “person after person” who called and checked in with Izzo.

He also received calls and text messages with U-M coach Juwan Howard and his assistants Phil Martelli and Saddi Washington, who is a Lansing native.

“It makes you realize games are important,” Izzo said, “but not as important as some things.”

Which leads to the preparation for the trip to Michigan. The Spartans defeated the Wolverines on Jan. 7 at Breslin, 59-53. MSU currently has won two in a row while U-M is coming off back-to-back losses, 62-61 at home Saturday against Indiana and 64-59 on Tuesday at Wisconsin.

Izzo said attempting to sharpen his players’ mental focus while coping with their emotions will be the prevailing theme of Friday’s practice before they leave for Ann Arbor.

“That’ll be the hard part,” he said. “The game could start and we could we get off to a great start or we can lay an egg. I don't know. … What I'm going to tell them tomorrow is, ‘I got a job to do, too. And my job is to push you as far as I can push you. And yet understand that each one of you are going to handle things differently. So help me help you.’ That's gonna be my message.”

As for the outpouring of support from the U-M community, Izzo was appreciative and said it shows “respect for schools, respect for human beings.”

“I greatly appreciate the support that I've gotten from the University of Michigan, the texts I've gotten from people, the way their university has stood up,” Izzo said. “Does it help? Of course it helps. Hopefully, I think what you realize is everybody's in the same position in these jobs right now. The world's gone mad a little bit.

“What can happen here can happen in Northern Michigan, it could happen the University of Michigan, it can happen at Eastern Michigan, it could happen every and anywhere. And so I promise you this, whatever they're feeling, it would be reciprocated if the tables were turned.”

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari.

Read more on the Michigan State Spartans and sign up for our Spartans newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tom Izzo knows Michigan game can help Michigan State heal