Tom Izzo recaps Michigan State’s ‘atrocious’ start vs. USC

Michigan State took their first conference loss and first loss of any kind in over two months because of a bad start that they never recovered from in LA.

Tom Izzo noted the ‘atrocious’ start that never got that much better for the Spartans following the 70-64 defeat at USC on Saturday.

“Had an assistant that said what starts bad, ends bad and this start was atrocious,” Izzo said postgame.

“Wanted to go inside right off the bat and turned the ball over twice. We took a couple bad shots. I think it was 9-3 and I think we only had one shot. You know, and then we got down 21-7,” Izzo said. “You know, give our guys credit. They bounced back but USC played better than us.”

The Trojans lead from start to finish against the Spartans after a 6-0 opening that got to as much of a lead as 22-7 over the first seven minutes of the game. ‘SC started shooting at 7/13 (53.8% FG) and made all seven of their free throws, including one from a foul on a three-pointer. Over that same span, MSU opened at 2/8 (25% FG) with three turnovers.

Michigan State did cut into that lead over the game with them cutting that margin to as small as a possession a few times. Still, in total, Izzo felt they were much further off than that considering how the game went and how they played in some of their key statistics.

“I thought the biggest things that happened in the game? We got punched in the mouth. That doesn’t happen to us very often and I don’t know if we responded very well. Then, right before half, we did a little better job,” Izzo said. “But when you don’t take care of the boards like we did, even though we out-rebounded them by one? That’s kind of a facade. They had a couple of times when they had three and four rebounds in a row and scored both times – one on a three and one on a three-point play. Then, uncharacteristically, we shot poorly from the free-throw line. We’re an 83% free-throw shooting team and what did we end up shooting, 57% or something? And a couple of those goofy turnovers.”

“That’s usually the difference in the game,” said Izzo.

This is just the Spartans’ third loss all season and first one in the league as they remain atop the Big Ten. Still, Izzo wants to see them handle tough games better with them at the halfway point of conference play as they’ll have another one out west on Tuesday.

“Give credit to USC. They played well,” said Izzo.

“I’ve been waiting to see how we would respond to some adversity and today we didn’t respond very well so we’ll have to fix that quickly since we’ve got another game coming up.”