Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the Big Blue Nation, and welcome to the Tuesday Morning Quickies.
This morning’s big story is a sad one… and a happy one, as many such stories are. Jud Heathcote, the former coach of the Michigan State Spartans who led MSU to their first NCAA Tournament championship in 1979, has died. That’s the sad part.
The happy part is that he lived a robust 90 years, and coached one of the iconic games ever in NCAA history — the showdown between Magic Johnson’s Spartans and Larry Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores — a game that foretold a legendary rivalry that spanned more than a decade in the professional ranks between two of the greatest basketball players in history.