Hey, it's Thursday, which means we're coming at you with a short
feel good story from a past guest.
Hope you enjoyed the clip this week, Tom Izzo.
How about your most emotional loss over the years?
Wow, my most emotional loss. I mean, I I've had a lot of
them, but. You've been known to shed a
tear. Oh, yeah, yeah.
You know, I'm, I'm, I'm an Italian guy worth my emotions on
my sleeve. Sometimes good and sometimes
bad, but sometimes those officials can't take a joke.
What can I say about it? You know, it's just the way it
is. But I think the worst one for me
was, I want to say it was 2015 when I had a kid named Denzel
Valentine. We had a really, really good
team. We're we should have been a one
seed. We ended up a two seed.
Middle Tennessee should have been about a twelve seed.
They end up a 15 seed. And that team shot 56% against
us from the field and 53 from the three.
And we shot in the 50s and lost. And I've had about 3 or 4 that I
really thought were Final four teams, but that one was one.
And it was with a group of guys I'd known.
Denzel, I recruited his dad out of the math of high school when
I was a Gai, watched him, won three state championships here
in high school. He came here and I watched them
grow as a person and as a player.
And I have a saying, Do you like the game?
Do you love the game or do you live the game?
It's the three L's. And he lived it.
And we're out in the first round.
And that was hard to stomach, It really was.
It it still gets to you. You can tell, Yeah, it does
because I I think you have we, we've gone to a final four as a
seven seed. So I think every year we have a
chance. But when you lose as a one or
two seed and you had the type of guys I had, you know, like some
teams. I mean, you'll, you'll like them
all, you know, love some of them, but there's some that are
special. He was special, but we were a 2
and we ran into a a team that was very well coached and very
good and, and you know, and all the media, well, you look past
them. No, that that wasn't the case.
That's the difference with football and basketball to me.
I tell Mary Jo time, not many upsets happen in football.
Use the bigger, stronger, better team wins over the 60 minutes.
In basketball, we have two outliers, a three-point shot and
the officials. And and I say that not
negatively about the officials, but if your star player gets in
foul trolls and can change the game.
So those two factors in this game, neither one of those were
factors. Team just played better than us.
You said it gets to you that you haven't won the second
championship. What?
Well, we've been back to six Final Fours, you know, and you
kind of feel like, why can't we get over the hump, You know, and
there's been good reasons. There's in fact, there's been
three Final Fours. We didn't get to that.
I thought we were as good or better than some of the teams
there. But it gets selfish, too, you
know, like the day that we played Temple to go to a Final
Four in 2001, John Cheney, one of my favorite guys, we won the
game and I had to go down and shake his hand.
And I kind of felt like he was America's team.
Everybody was pulling for him. I felt like the guy that shot
Bambi, you know, I was like, God, I was apologizing for
winning because I had so much respect for him.
But at the same time, why we can't win that second one, you
know? And so I've got to figure out
what I'm doing wrong, you know? Your first one came so early in
your head coaching career and you're in infinitely better
coach now and had so much more success since then that it's
like interesting how that works. Well, you've heard the old
adage, you know, players play the game.
But I think the difference is I had an incredible leader in the
team, Cleaves. I mean, he was our version of
Magic Johnson. And I've had some good ones,
Draymond Green and Denzel and and some other guys that have
been very good leaders. I like people that I used to say
drag people with them, but then that sounds like they're forcing
them. So we've come up with the term
that gather people who can gather people and make them
better than they really are. That's what a great leader does.
So a player, coach, team is always better than a.
Coach, coach, team. When you got a real good leader,
you have a real shot. One quick favor before you
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