Izzo Returns From Trip to Kuwait

Tom Izzo has won a national championship, but the Michigan State basketball coach said that experience can’t compare to his recent trip to Kuwait.

“It was a life-changing experience, and other than my children being born, I don’t think I’ve had another one of those,” Izzo said in a telephone interview Friday afternoon, about 12 hours after returning to East Lansing, Mich. “It might sound hokey, but I know I’ll be a better person and American for going over there.”

Izzo led his team of U.S. military members to a title Wednesday in the Operation Hardwood basketball tournament at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, just outside of Iraq.

“We listen to him knowing he is a winner and a leader,” team Arifjan’s center Christopher McKelvey told the Desert Voice, a publication for coalition forces in Kuwait.

Oklahoma’s Kelvin Sampson, Alabama’s Mark Gottfried, South Carolina’s Dave Odom, UNC-Charlotte’s Bobby Lutz, former coaches Mike Jarvis and Bobby Cremins and ESPN analyst Jay Bilas led teams from Kuwait military camps in the five-day tournament.

“They follow sports with satellite television, but they don’t watch the news because they think it provides a distorted picture,” Izzo said.