Meet the Izzo who won't be in Buffalo for Michigan State's NCAA opener
· Yahoo Sports
Dom Izzo will not be in Western New York this week for the first round of the NCAA Tournament. He's the first to tell you, he's bummed out to miss such a momentous event.
Yes.
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Dom.
That’s not a typo. Dom Izzo is a TV and radio broadcaster from Fargo, North Dakota, who just happens to share a surname with a certain basketball coach from East Lansing.
A veteran of nearly 20 years on the airwaves in Fargo and the current sports director at WDAY-TV, Dom Izzo also handles play-by-play duty for telecasts of the North Dakota State Bison in football, women’s basketball and, yep, men’s basketball.
But come Thursday, March 19, there will be no Izzo (non-)family reunion at KeyBank Center in Buffalo.
It's not for lack of trying. Dom Izzo (no immediate relation) on Monday, March 16, said he has been worked on connecting with Tom Izzo for years now, to no avail. And he’ll miss another chance when the 3-seed Spartans (25-7) face the 14-seed Bison (27-7) in MSU's East region first-round game Thursday (4:05 p.m., TNT).
“I was following this and was hoping it would be Portland [Oregon] or something,” said Dom, a native of Oswego, New York. “Not Buffalo, because Buffalo is literally 2½ hours from where I grew up. So it’s a double-whammy. And then it’s Michigan State, of all teams, that [the Bison] are going to be playing.”
Dom said his wife previously had surgery scheduled for Friday, which is why he won’t be traveling to Buffalo with the men’s hoops team. Instead, Dom plans to be on the call for Thursday's NDSU women’s home game against Chattanooga in the WNIT, remaining nearby for his wife the next day.
NCAA tournament time has brought two other chances for Dom to get in touch with Tom. The first came in 2009, when the Bison – in their first year of eligibility after moving up from Division II in 2004-05 – earned their first March Madness berth and lost a thriller to 3-seed Kansas in the first round in Minneapolis. MSU – and Tom – also were there, facing Robert Morris to begin what would be a journey to the Final Four in Detroit that year.
Then in 2019, when Tom and the Spartans made their most recent Final Four, it was in Minneapolis. Dom tried to find a way to make the 3½-hour trek from Fargo to the Twin Cities, but he couldn’t get the logistics worked out.
“One-on-one interviews with the Michigan State men’s basketball coach probably don’t happen,” Dom said. “I have some kind of [name] connection here that I thought would help us out, but it never materialized. And then obviously this happens, and it’s just like, oh my gosh. That’s unbelievable.”
For his part, Tom, during his press conference Monday, ticked off some of his North Dakota connections, including NDSU being the alma mater of his friend (and former NFL coach) Jerry Rosburg. After winning two national championships and earning All-America honors as a senior in 1978, Rosburg become roommates with Tom Izzo and Steve Mariucci while they were working as graduate assistants at Izzo’s alma mater, Northern Michigan.
“Back in the back in the back in the day when I was at Northern Michigan, I remember driving over there and scouting at North Dakota and North Dakota State,” Izzo joked, “and then driving back in about 30 hours. And it snows up there a little bit, by the way.”
Perhaps one day, he’ll make his way back and he can finally meet his near-namesake. Dom said he would have loved to even just get a picture with Tom this weekend, “which my dad would have went over the moon on for anything like that.”
As for that similar-sounding name to the 31st-year Hall of Fame coach? Dom said he has been asked about it “ever since I got into the business” back in the early 2000s in Syracuse and Glens Falls, New York. That hasn’t superseded an award-winning career that has included being named the North Dakota Sportscaster of the Year by the National Sports Media Association multiple times.
But since the Selection Sunday announcement, his phone, email and call-ins to his radio show “Hot Mic with Dom Izzo” have gone berserk. And he has been “having a ball with it.”
“The amount of people that have messaged me since this came out has been off the chart. People that don’t know me or my buddies back home,” Dom said. “I had somebody email my show today giving me a tale of the tape and listed off Tom Izzo’s resume and then mine, which is Sportscaster of the Year and third place in a hot dog-eating contest in my hometown.
“Advantage, Tom Izzo.”
Contact Chris Solari: [email protected]. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State basketball: Tom Izzo to miss NDSU broadcaster Dom Izzo