Tom Izzo on battling back again from halftime deficit: 'That sucks, I'm not real proud of that'

The Michigan State Spartans had to battle back from a seven-point halftime deficit on Thursday, defeating the Iowa Hawkeyes 91-84. The fact that they even had to battle back from a halftime deficit did not please their head coach very much. And Tom Izzo sounded off on the matter after the game.

“Yeah, that sucks, you know. I’m not very proud of that either. To be honest with you. I don’t know why all the time, except. Listen, if you thought we thought we were coming in here. Because they were struggling a little bit, that wasn’t going to happen. We weren’t coming in here, he’s too good of a coach, too good of players, too good of guys. Too good of a program. So, we knew it was going to be a dogfight. We didn’t think. We acted,” Izzo explained.

“So, something’s gotta change. But in a lot of these games, too, you know. We’re not playing, I mean whoever the hell said, ‘We’re so good.’ Not me! I mean, we’re good. But we have flaws. And the flaws are if we don’t play at the level we need to play at on the defensive end. If we get outrebounded the first half. If we take too many threes. Jase [Richardson] kept us in it. And we had some guys that, you know, I mean you saw them driving by guys like we were statues. I mean, we didn’t win any more games. So, for me, I’m happy we won the Big Ten. I’m ecstatic. I’ll be ecstatic when I walk out of this building. Until I get to the plane…It’s Michigan week, so we start preparing for them right away,” Izzo continued.

“I’m not gonna sit here and sugarcoat and tell you I’m excited how we played just because we won. Because that’s not gonna get me to where I think we can go and need to go. And I said if we start shooting the ball better, we have a chance as long as our defense continues to do what it did. Tonight, we decided to exchange that and so, poor job on my part,” Izzo finished.

Michigan State now sits at 25-5 overall and they’ll finish off their regular season on Sunday, March 9th with the Michigan Wolverines. Tip-off for that one is noon EST, and the game will be nationally televised on CBS,