CORAL GABLES, Fla. _ They met for the first time, full of young dreams, in 1986. Jim Larranaga was the new Bowling Green coach. Tom Izzo had been promoted to a full-time assistant at Michigan State.
Izzo was a part-time assistant before that, meaning he made $7,200 a year and lived in student housing. So that summer of 1986 he had left the state of Michigan for the first and only time in his life to become Tulsa's recruiting director.
Seven weeks later, Michigan State called with a full-time job. So Izzo won't remember much of Tulsa when he returns there for the first-round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday. But he'll know all about the coach on the other sideline.
"Oh, we're friends. We've known each other a long time," Miami's Larranaga said.
They've vacationed together with their wives as part of a shoe deal and can connect the years with games against each other. They even had a famous first-round tournament meeting in 2006.
Larranaga was 11th-seeded George Mason's coach then; Izzo, a year removed from the Final Four, had molded sixth-seeded Michigan State into one of the nation's top programs.
"We're just going to have fun, guys," Larranaga told his team before that game. "You know what? We're just going to have fun."
They had more fun than anyone expected, upsetting Michigan State and starting perhaps the unlikeliest run to the Final Four. Mason Madness, that March was called. A decade later, Larranaga's message hasn't changed.
"Everyone's working hard and having fun," Larranaga was saying outside the Hurricanes' team bus Tuesday, the one heading to the airport and the flight to Tulsa.
In some ways, nothing has changed for the two basketball lifers. But Larranaga, now 67, and Izzo, 62, have changed as they've grown to know themselves.
Larranaga can laugh at the times he'd get so worked up at Bowling Green that his wife told him he needed to calm down. Izzo, with two titles and seven Final Four appearances, isn't driven by the youthful ambition to succeed.
Now they bring an old-school wisdom and common-sense perspective to the game. Izzo is delighted to be here, considering a week ago he wasn't sure if Michigan State would qualify for its 20th consecutive tournament.
Larranaga, too, appreciates the journey of this Miami team with only nine scholarship players. That's, in part, because of NCAA sanctions from the Nevin Shapiro fiasco. It's also because Larranaga dismissed two talented players this season, 6-foot-6 Rashad Muhammad and 6-9 Michael Gilmore.
"Failure to meet team expectations," was the stated reason. Larranaga, you see, runs a program with three general rules that, as he has said, might sound "corny":
1) Always be positive.
2) Have unconditional commitment to your work on the court and in the classroom.
3) Act in a first-class manner.
To some, that's Mayberry R.F.D. in a YouTube world. But maybe following such simple rules is how you teach players to be better people. Maybe Miami making the tournament with this unlikely team is testament to that.
"This was really a special year for me and the staff and the players," Larranaga said. "Going into the season with basically six very inexperienced players and three veterans. You can have six inexperienced players if you have six veterans. But there were games we only played seven."
Izzo, too, brings a brand of rawhide-tough discipline that is well known in college-basketball circles. As Larranaga says, "His best friends are all football coaches."
The story of college basketball, many say, is the story of big-name coaches running big-time programs. Maybe so. But the real story of those coaches consists of the all-consuming passion they had long before arriving in the big-time.
It's one of dreaming in small programs, or smaller positions, while consumed with a passion that will carry across a long career. Larranaga and Izzo tell that narrative. They met three decades ago with youthful dreams of basketball.
They meet Friday night, older now, but with the same dreams.
