History not lost on Tom Izzo during Michigan State visit to Washington

Seattle — Tom Izzo and his Michigan State team were on hallowed ground for practice in the lead-up to Saturday’s 80-63 win at Washington. Ancestral ground, even, and not just for the six indigenous tribes whose land the university was built on.

Izzo and his team got to practice on a court dedicated to Marv Harshman, who in a way is Izzo’s coaching tree grandfather. 

Harshman was a longtime coach at Washington State from 1958 to 1971, where from 1964 on he mentored a young assistant named Jud Heathcote. Heathcote then went to Montana and then Michigan State, where he coached the Magic Johnson-led 1979 national championship team and was a two-time Big Ten coach of the year. He also mentored another young assistant named Tom Izzo, who worked for him from 1983 until he handed him the reins to his team in 1995.

All these years later, Izzo — a national champion whose long list of accolades include the Big Ten’s all-time wins record with 366 and counting — still shares frequent memories of his mentor Heathcote. That was fresh on his mind this weekend.

“There’s a lot of good things about here, mostly because of Jud and all the stories he told me about Washington,” Izzo said.

Back in East Lansing, Heathcote used to bring a retired Harshman into practices in the fall. He’d send Izzo into a classroom to learn from the source of his own coaching lessons.

“Jud would tell me, ‘Go talk to Marv. You’ll learn more basketball in an afternoon,’” Izzo said. “And I’d go in that room, and Marv would take the chalkboard and it was covered with stuff. And then Jud came in and he said, ‘Did you screw up my assistant?’ And I loved Marv Harshman. I absolutely loved him. I thought he was a brilliant mind at 80-something.”

Harshman died in 2013, but before then he got to see the Washington practice court dedicated in his honor in 2008. After Washington State let him walk in 1971, Harshman went across the state to Seattle and coached the Huskies from then until his retirement in 1985, when he was immediately inducted in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Heathcote died in 2017 at the age of 90.

Izzo said he brought Harshman’s son, Dave, in to speak with his team Friday after practice.

“I’ll always have a soft spot for the Harshman family,” Izzo said, “… and a lot of that’s because of Jud.”

In the MSU-Washington series, the Spartans notched their first win in Seattle on Saturday. The last time they met at Washington was Dec. 30, 1957. The Huskies won that one, 71-69.

The Spartans are 6-2 against Washington all-time, though none of those games pitted the Spartans against Harshman’s squads.

cearegood@detroitnews.com

@ConnorEaregood