Tom Izzo explains what “beats a Final 4” as the greatest honor he can receive

Tom Izzo is one of the most respected coaches in college basketball.

That’s not exactly a hot take seeing as it feels like every opposing coach in the country respects him and what he’s built in East Lansing. He’s built a winning program, but he’s done it the right way, and the culture surrounding his program is second to none.

So when Gary Parrish of CBS Sports polled 100 college basketball coaches and asked who they would want their sons to play for, Izzo’s name unsurprisingly came up 16 times.

Sixteen percent of coaches polled said that they’d want their sons to play for Izzo, which was the second-most votes behind Purdue’s Matt Painter. Both coaches are at the top of the sport, and it’s not surprising to see that they’ve garnered the utmost respect from their colleagues.

Parrish sat down with Izzo at Big Ten Media Days and told him what the poll revealed. Izzo said it was “the greatest honor you can have” and it “beats the Final Four”.

It’s unclear if he was talking about being voted as a coach who fellow college basketball coaches would want their sons to play for or the fact that he always has players coming back to campus. I’m going to go ahead and assume it was a mixture of both.

Parrish shared a quote with Izzo from one coach who raved about the culture and how former players always come back, and he said that he’d want his son to be part of something special like that.

Izzo responded with “that’s the greatest honor you can have”.

The Hall of Fame head coach prides himself on culture and building rosters filled with OKGs (our kind of guys) and he’s done a good enough job of that over the years that former players can’t wait to come back and visit Izzo. They know just how much he cares about them.

Having a culture that other coaches envy is the greatest honor for Izzo.