EAST LANSING, Mich. — Back on July 19, 1983, Tom Izzo, an impassioned 28-year-old ex-Division II college basketball player, was named a part-time assistant men’s basketball coach at Michigan State University. He’d spent the previous five years as an assistant at Northern Michigan, his alma mater in Michigan’s far-flung upper peninsula.
Moving to a low-level job on Jud Heathcote’s staff at Michigan State, a place four years removed…