Izzo, Barnes say Michigan State-Tennessee exhibition was a win for everyone involved

East Lansing, Mich. – Michigan State coach Tom Izzo was of contradictory mindsets after his team’s 89-88 loss to Tennessee in an exhibition game with the proceeds benefiting the Maui Strong Fund. One part of him wondered why he would take his lumps from a physical, tough, and well-coached team, which treated this game like more than an exhibition match-up. The other part of Izzo enjoyed the March-like atmosphere at the Breslin Center in a heavyweight match-up between Top 10 teams.

“It was the right thing to do, and it was the right opportunity that the NCAA gave us do something like that,” Izzo said during his post-game press conference. “I don’t know how much money it will end up raising, but a lot more than it would have if that was an empty place.”

Tennessee coach Rick Barnes has been a longtime advocate for public exhibition games between high-major opponents. He points to Sunday’s public exhibition game between the Spartans and Vols as example everything good that came come from allowing these games without a waiver.

“There is no benefit of anything behind closed doors that takes the place of this,” Barnes said. “I’ve said it for years that we should be allowed to play two or three of these like this. I think it does more to get us ready than closed scrimmages because of the atmosphere … I think we can all come together for a good cause, whatever that may be. I think you can pick different causes to support people around the country. But this is invaluable.”

Regardless of whether the rules governing exhibition games change or remain status quo, Sunday’s exhibition between Michigan State and Tennessee was a rousing success.

“You lose by one in a game that was a helluva game for the people,” Izzo said. “Most important, and why we did it, I hope it does bring light on the people from Maui … When you go there, you get treated so well. And I thought our people here did a great job. It was a phenomenal crowd, and it’s not easy during football to have a crowd like that. I give a lot of credit to our fans, our students, our marketing, and our tickets. To everybody, they did a great job.”

Like Barnes, Izzo learned a lot about his team in this exhibition. Players involved on both benches got a real taste for the competitive effort that is required to play well against good basketball teams.

Freshman point guard Jeremy Fears, for instance, had little trouble running his team in the exhibition opener against Hillsdale earlier this week. It was much tougher sledding against a Tennessee team that was prepared to take away much of what the Spartans do on offense.

And it wasn’t just Fears. Veteran point guard AJ Hoggard had his share of difficulty as the trigger man for Michigan State in the halfcourt. Hoggard finished with more turnovers than assists in this game.

“We had some guys that overdribbled and overhandled it early,” Izzo said. “Ball movement wasn’t as good, and that’s because they are really good defensively. They are big. Those guards are 6-5, 6-6. They had some big guards and that hurt us a little bit. I think Jeremy is going to be fine, but when you take it in there on those big guys, it’s hard to get it up.”

Fears ranked second amongst Michigan State freshmen in minutes played with 12. Coen Carr led the group in playing time with 16 minutes and led the group in scoring with nine points on 4-of-6 shooting, while adding four rebounds and one blocked shot. Xavier Booker scored three points and added three rebounds with one block in eight minutes.

“Coen played pretty well, and Xavier played okay,” Izzo said. “We didn’t get him as much time for a couple of reasons.”

Michigan State did make progress on the rebounding front in this game after struggling in the first exhibition game. The Spartans outrebounded Tennessee 38-31 overall, and 16-8 on the offensive glass. Those numbers should have been even better according to Izzo.

“Our wings and our guards have got to get more rebounds,” Izzo said. “Jaden (Akins) didn’t have a rebound, and our bigs had been playing really well in practice and didn’t play very well.”

Michigan State also got some production out of its full-court defense. The Spartan defense forced 20 turnovers in this game. A good chunk of those turnovers were the result of harassing Tennessee the length of the court.

“Our defense was pretty good in the full court,” Izzo said. “In the halfcourt we weren’t very good, and that’s what we’ve got to continue to work on.”