‘One of the icons in our profession.’

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One day in late February 1998, Tom Izzo called Gene Keady with a question.

This wasn’t uncommon. Izzo had known Keady since Izzo’s days as an assistant under Jud Heathcote at Michigan State. When Izzo rose to replace Heathcote as head coach in East Lansing, Keady was among a tight circle of coaches Izzo knew he could call for advice. But this call was a bit awkward.

Michigan State was playing Keady’s Purdue team on the last day of the regular season. The Spartans, 13-2 in the Big Ten, had already clinched at least a share of Izzo’s first conference title as head coach, and they planned to hang a banner that day to celebrate.

Purdue was 11-4, ranked in the top 15 nationally but guaranteed to finish third in the league behind Michigan State and Illinois. Izzo felt nervous about the banner. If Michigan State won, the Spartans won the league outright. If they lost, they shared honors with Illinois. But Izzo’s greatest concern was making sure Keady didn’t feel Purdue was being shown up by Michigan State holding the ceremony pregame, when every fan attending could see it.

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“He goes, ‘Ah no, you do whatever you think’s best. Don’t worry, I don’t look at that as anything against us,’” Izzo recalled, laughing. “We dropped the banner beforehand. His team went on to beat us. I always wondered if he did that on purpose, just so he could kill me.”

When Izzo, alongside Jerry Colangelo, presents Keady this weekend as the newest member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, it will represent the culmination of decades of those kinds of moments, for two of the best basketball coaches in Big Ten history.

“It’s a privilege to present him,” Izzo told IndyStar. “He’s one of the great, great coaches, and one of the great, great guys.”

Izzo’s relationship with Keady dates back decades.

He first met the longtime…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/tom-izzo-wrote-gene-keady-091108858.html?src=rss

Author : IndyStar | The Indianapolis Star

Publish date : 2023-08-11 09:11:08

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