Tom Izzo entered the 1997-98 season on the hot seat as Michigan State’s basketball coach; he was just 33-27 overall with a couple NIT bids in his first two seasons.
Year 3 was different though. The Spartans were stacked with a slew of young talent out of Flint, Michigan. Boasting a 13-4 record in late January, they found themselves somewhere new under Izzo — nationally ranked for the first time at No. 22.
To mark the occasion, MSU delivered a nationally televised 84-66 blowout of vaunted Indiana. Mateen Cleaves scored 10 and added 13 assists. Charlie Bell had 17. Antonio Smith grabbed 10 rebounds. Morris Peterson came off the bench for 11.
The impressive victory over Bob Knight’s Hoosiers provided a burst of credibility and confidence, propelling the program all the way to the Sweet 16 that year, the Final Four the next and the national title the year after that.
It was a breakout win in a breakout season for the then-42-year-old Izzo, who over the course of the next quarter century-plus would become a Hall of Fame coaching icon. Just last week he passed Knight for the most Big Ten victories ever, with 354.
Working that day for the IU program was a student manager named Dusty May. He was a nobody, a sophomore history major from the little Southern Indiana town of Bloomfield. (May said Knight wouldn’t even learn his name until a year or two later, when he stayed on campus to work summer camps.)
He was another in a long line of basketball-obsessed Hoosiers willing to do pretty much anything to learn from a legend.
Tom Izzo and the Michigan State Spartans are firmly in the Top 25 and could make another run in the NCAA tournament in March. (Rey Del Rio/Getty Images)
Izzo was just an opposing coach that day, but over the years May paid close attention to the Spartan program — the way it was run, the way it was led, the way it succeeded.
“He’s probably the closest to Coach Knight as any coach in the country,” May said, noting that if anyone was to break the Big Ten record, Izzo should be the guy.
On Friday, Dusty May and the now-70-year-old Tom Izzo “meet” again — at least if you are willing to strain the term — when MSU visits Ann Arbor.
Izzo is still where he seemingly always is — head coach of the nationally ranked Spartans (14th in the country with a 21-5 record).
May, 48, is the first-year coach at rival Michigan, his Wolverines (20-5) sitting at No. 12.
The two ancient, bitter rivals sit atop the Big Ten, with eyes on winning the league and perhaps a lot more.
“Coach Knight would always say, if you are in position to win the Big Ten championship, then you are in position to contend for the NCAA championship,” May said.
It isn’t often that a regular season college basketball game bears the significance — narrative or history — of say a big football game, but this one just might.
No, May doesn’t need a victory Friday to prove himself or rocket his career forward — he took mid-major Florida Atlantic to the 2023 Final Four, after all. And no, it wouldn’t be fair, considering how good this Spartan team is, to declare Izzo near the end of his career.
Still, there is something here. May is the latest in a series of Michigan coaches to take run at Izzo through the years. Some have found prolonged success — John Beilein took the program to two NCAA title games — but none have ever been able to knock him off his perch.
Meanwhile, to this day, beating Michigan is an intense motivational point for Izzo, who no matter his successes still harbors a measure of competitive hatred over a program he once chased and forever competes against, especially in local recruiting. He’s 34-21 against Michigan.
“The rivalry,” Izzo said Thursday, “is the rivalry.”
May knows that. Being part of this kind of high-level, high-stakes game is part of what drew him to Ann Arbor after six seasons at FAU. He certainly had options, but it was more than just Big Ten membership, the program’s history or its recruiting potential that made Michigan appealing.
In an era of fluid rosters due to the open transfer portal, May believes one key to stability is to be at a university that offers far more than just athletics. He notes that while for “star players it’s always going to be about basketball,” he thinks having a school with enormous resources and academic might can help keep young, developing players and program cornerstones from jumping ship. That’s how you build champions.
And that, he said, is Michigan with its world-class academic offerings.
“When it’s not just basketball, it becomes very difficult to leave,” May said.
The early results couldn’t be much better. May inherited an 8-24 team and a lot of dysfunction from his predecessor, Juwan Howard. With nine players departing, the roster needed an overhaul. Expectations were low outside the program, but not for May and his staff — at least once he landed guard Tre Donaldson (Auburn) and 7-footers Danny Wolf (Yale) and Vladislav Goldin (FAU) from the portal.
“Once we got the two big guys and Tre, I thought we had a NCAA tournament team,” May said.
It’s what he expects, if not more, here — “I realistically believe we can be a Big Ten contender every year,” May said.
Dusty May’s Michigan Wolverines are 20-5 in his first season at the helm of the program. (AP Photo/Kareem Elgazzar)
Is May settled in for the long haul, the way Izzo set up shop in East Lansing? Is this one of those generational battles — not necessarily the passing of a baton because Izzo is not fading, but at least a moment in time?
Much of that is up to May, and not just whether he can win as big as he has across his career. Indiana, his alma mater, has a job opening, after all, and there may be nothing Hoosier fans want more than to bring their old student manager home.
May, however, may already be set up in Ann Arbor. One son, Charlie, is a walk-on junior. Another, Eli, is a freshman team manager. The chance at a Michigan degree for both sons is vitally important for both May and his wife, Anna. (Eldest son Jack graduated from Florida and is working in the Miami Heat video department).
“We’ve settled into a unique living situation, with both sons in college here,” May said. “It would be tough to uproot.”
If so, then this is potentially the first rivalry game of a potentially long Michigan career, the first rivalry battle against the Green and White.
It’s fitting that it’s against Izzo, who has been a force at Michigan State and in the Big Ten since that day all those years ago when he broke the Spartans into the national rankings and then served notice by blowing out Bob Knight for everyone to see … including an ambitious, if anonymous, student manager across the way.
