Tom Izzo stresses importance for Michigan State to find normalcy after shooting

Tom Izzo and his Michigan State team had a difficult week following the tragic shooting that took place Monday on campus. It wasn’t the first time Izzo has had to coach a group of players following a moment that will sadly stick with his players for a long time.

But after Saturday’s loss to Michigan in Ann Arbor, Izzo reflected on what he has learned dealing with tragedy in the past and how he hopes the Michigan State community can come together during this time.

“I think with every tragedy and I’ve, unfortunately, been through too many things here in the last five, six years,” Izzo said. “In fact, come back to 9/11, I think getting back to normalcy the best you can shouldn’t be taken as an insult for the people. I felt it hard to give a Knute Rockne speech because I was thinking what would I do as a parent. Would I feel good? So that was difficult. I’m a weirdo. I believe we should have gone back to work after COVID. I believe we should get back to school Monday. I realized there’s going to be problems and people are going to have to deal with things but I don’t know how you learn to deal with things if you never go through them. It’s very important that normalcy regains itself and yet don’t forget what happened. That would be an insult the victims. Don’t forget it, try to do better. But unfortunately, the sad part of life is it does move on.”

Tom Izzo hopes the Michigan State community can find heeling after shooting

Saturday’s Michigan game was the first time Michigan State took the floor following the tragic events of last Monday. The Wolverines showed their support for their in-state rivals by having their team and student section wear “Michigan basketball stands with MSU” t-shirts and lit their arena green before the start of the game.

Tom Izzo said he hopes his school can heal following the tragedy.

“I’m hoping that our university heals and I’m hoping that the way to heal is get everybody back together and not keep everybody separated,” Izzo said. “We’ve been separated enough for two years of COVID and Twitter and all the crap that we got to go through. I think getting everybody back together is good. Getting my team back together was good. I do think we the competition helped. A win would have helped more because it was right there…The final score was not indicative of the game. But they deserved to win the game because they did it fair and square and I respect them.”