Major kudos goes out to Daily Drink reader, Don "The Polish Pickle" Busakowski for sending over this story. It's a look at the High School coaching debut of Tom Izzo at Ispheming High School. Izzo needs to grow his hair back out again.

Here's what the pickle had to say......"Thought you might enjoy the clipping I found in an old scrapbook.  Check out Tom Izzo's sport coat...  It's from November 1977.  I was a sophomore guard for West Iron County when we played Ispheming High School in Tom Izzo's head coaching debut."

Also from Don: Whenever Izzo gets to the Final Four – ESPN likes to roll out the story of the 2 free throws he missed in high school.  That was also against West Iron County.  It was March of 1972 at the C.B. Hedgecock Field House at Northern Michigan University.  It was the Class B regional final – which is always considered the U.P. championship as the winner goes downstate to the state tournament – and with about 5 seconds left and West Iron County leading by 1, Izzo, who was a junior at the time, was fouled.  He missed both free throws.  I was 11 at the time and sitting in the first row by the West Iron bench.  My older brother was a junior on West Iron’s team.

 They ran the story again on Saturday morning on ESPN and told how to this day Izzo has a student assistant go onto floor with him when he gets to the Breslin Center and rebound for him as he shoots 100 free throws as his penance for missing those 2.  They showed a clip of the game and in the clip my brother was guarding Izzo.





You can read the actual game story here, here, here and here.