Tom Izzo on Michigan State’s slow start: ‘Blame me, not the players’

What seemed like a very promising 2023-24 hoops season for Sparty has turned into disaster less than a month in as Michigan State has now dropped their Bg Ten opener to fall to 4-4.

Tom Izzo discussed the game afterwards with a grumbling purr, guessing at answers after yet another discouraging defeat on this young hoops season. To start, Izzo admitted he did mis-handle the big man rotation vs. the Badgers with Malik Hall unexpectedly being able to play.

“It was not until game time that I even thought that Malik would play. I didn’t handle that very well and I played him way too many minutes. Give him credit for trying to suck it up, because our two bigs struggled early, especially when (Tyler) Wahl got in foul trouble and they went with a different lineup and we just did not handle some of the coverages right.”

For the team as a whole, Tom Izzo just doesn’t see enough toughness, which is a problem he takes blame for.

“We are not tough enough right now and that’s all me,” said the MSU head coach. “So I’ll be here all night, I promise you that. I’m going to get it fixed, and so, blame me, not the players. That’s not to soften it up. Some guys didn’t play very well.”

Izzo then listed a slew factors in this individual game that contributed to the loss, like the very efficient offensive performance by the Badgers.

“At the same time, you got to give credit to Wisconsin, where I thought they shot the daylights out of it the last two days, today especially,” he commented, highlighting some of Wisconsin’s unusually strong performances in that department vs. the Spartans.

“(Steven) Crowl, who’s I think taken three threes all year, hit four tonight. And give uh (AJ) Storr credit, you know, he’s shooting 20-something percent and goes 4-6. So guys that hadn’t shot it as well shot well for them and we just have struggled to shoot the ball.”

Basketball can often come down to simple math. In this case, Wisconsin doubling Michigan State at the free throw line while shooting far better than the Spartans from three more than did the job.

“Yet, they get 51 shots, we get 51. They get 14-14 from the line, that was one place the game was won,” Izzo continued. “They shoot 45% from three, we shot 31%.”

Per Izzo, the area where Michigan State really got killed when it mattered was the offensive glass.

“The game was lost when, 51-48, and we had three straight possessions, couldn’t score, and then they had five straight points and eight of the next 10, all on offensive rebounds. So even though they only got 11 for the game, which I would have been satisfied, at least five or six of them were at the end and they scored on all of them.”

Just so many factors — rebounding, free throw shooting, three point shooting, etc. — that all went for the Badgers and against the guys in green on Tuesday evening.