Tom Izzo reveals how Michigan State slowed down Hunter Dickinson

To the great delight of Michigan State fans, rival Michigan has been an unmitigated disaster on the basketball court this season, with their latest loss coming on the road against the Spartans. That win was extra sweet for MSU fans after star Wolverine center Hunter Dickinson publicly lambasted Michigan State fans, the school’s education and the athletic department.

“They’re belittled so much by us (Michigan) that, you know, they just get an ounce of success and they just run with it,” Dickinson said a few weeks back regarding Michigan State fans. He then added: “I think it’s honestly Michigan fans fault because we belittle them so much. Like, we’re just so much better than them in everything. You only go to Michigan State if you don’t get into Michigan.”

Even for a rivalry, those words pretty aggressive, especially that last comment degrading the educational status of a respectable Big Ten school. So Michigan State fans responded to those comments by packing the Breslin Center early on Saturday ahead of the Michigan State home game vs. Michigan. Dickinson was hounded by fans the moment he stepped on the court for warmups, being booed every time he touched the ball in the layup line.

He was able to play pretty well despite the vitriol from the crowd, scoring 18 points on 50% shooting while grabbing seven boards. A standard performance for him, but just not enough to get the win or back up his disdainful comments last month.

Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo thought his team did well in handling Dickinson, who is usually able to score with a lot better efficiency. Particularly, Mady Sissoko, who had the Dickinson assignment.

“I thought Mady did a pretty good job,” said Tom Izzo after the game. “But, we did a couple of things. We sometimes doubled, sometimes did not, and sometimes did nothing. I think that over the last couple of years, we just went at him with a steady diet of something and that wasn’t very good. He still had some points, but I thought he had to work for them. I thought we did a pretty good job; he’s a load to handle in there.”

In order to handle Dickinson, Izzo used double teams from some of his other wings and forwards to try and frustrate Dickinson and force him to pass the ball out. Still, though, the star big man was effective.

“I thought we did a pretty good job, and Mady was really good. AJ [Hoggard] got in there, Joey Hauser got some doubles, and when they threw out of the doubles they missed some good shots too. That let us keep doing it. I think that mixing it up was the key to at least somewhat contain him. He still had 18 points and that’s probably his average, so we didn’t do that good of a job on him, but we did make him work for what he got.”

Dickinson played pretty well all things considered. But Michigan State fans aren’t going to respect a performance like that when his team still lost after such vile trash talk about Michigan State’s fans, students and sports programs. It went deeper than basketball this time around, and Sparty got their most satisfying win of the season.