Tom Izzo lost the matriarch of his family just six days after her 100th birthday.
Dorothy Izzo died May 19, according to her obituary. The mother of Michigan State’s Hall of Fame basketball coach had been living near his sister in Appleton, Wisconsin, in recent years after raising her family in Iron Mountain.
Dorothy Izzo became an internet sensation earlier this season after her son, while mic’d up by FS1’s TV broadcast, said in a huddle during the Spartans’ win at Oregon that guard Kur Teng could not defend her to try and motivate him to play better defensively.
“Kur, you can’t guard my mother. MY MOTHER,” Izzo told the sophomore during a first-half timeout.
That led to a viral couple of weeks, including Dorothy Izzo receiving a 24-by-36-inch poster from her grandson, Tom’s son Steven, of AI-generated social media images of Dorothy putting on a scoring clinic that she hung on the wall of her residence.
“When most of the people around you are 85, 95 and 100 years old – and she’s in a great place – that’s a conversation piece,” Izzo said in February. “They don’t care about who her son is, they care about who she is. The stance, the dunking, the dribbling, the shooting, it’s awesome, isn’t it? Awesome.”
It became a conversation topic for the mother and son the next few weeks during their regular talks.
“I talk to her every day about it,” Izzo said. “I’ll keep her humble. I’m usually pretty good at keeping people humble. Although it’s a little harder when it’s your mother.”
Dorothy Brisson was born May 13, 1926, in the Upper Peninsula town of Norway and settled a few miles west in Iron Mountain after marrying Carl Izzo in 1951. They had their son, Tom, in 1955, and the Norway High valedictorian left her job as a registered nurse at the veterans’ hospital in Iron Mountain to raise her children and later returned to the medical profession as a nurse trainer.
She and her husband would make frequent trips to East Lansing to support Tom Izzo and MSU over the years after he took over as coach in 1995. Carl Izzo died in 2015.
“Dorothy loved watching sports,” her obituary read, “and even more so if it involved family.”
Dorothy Izzo is survived by her son, Tom, and two daughters, Mary Bucklin of Marietta, Georgia, and Anne Levandoski of Appleton; along with six grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and a number of other nieces and nephews in a close-knit family. Dorothy’s brother, Les Brisson, was married to Carl Izzo’s sister, Rose – she and Carl met at their wedding.
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dorothy Izzo, mom of Michigan State basketball coach Tom, dies at 100
Reporting by Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
