Tom Izzo: Michigan ‘played better, shot better, moved the ball better’ in win
Michigan State coach Tom Izzo was pleased with how his team played offensively in the first five minutes of an 87-70 blowout loss at Michigan Tuesday night. The Spartans’ defense was leaky from the get-go, though, and MSU trailed by double digits for most of the game. That included all of the last 27:13.
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Michigan scored at will inside and outside, dominating the paint and more than holding their own on the glass. Sophomore center Hunter Dickinson was unstoppable throughout, finishing with 33 points on 13-of-19 shooting, leading a thorough Spartan beatdown for the second consecutive year in Ann Arbor.
The Michigan State bigs were supposed to double team him in the second half, Izzo said, but for some reason, his players didn’t.
“I felt like we didn’t push him out as far and just kept backing us in. He made a lot of shots,” Izzo said. “He made some of those shots. At our place, he missed some of those shots.
“But as much as the game was lost there, the game was lost with the penetration and the lack of guarding ball screens. Pick your poison … actually, we probably did a decent job on [Eli] Brooks. He goes four for 11. [Caleb] Houstan gets seven shots up [for 16 points]. But our bigs didn’t do a very good job. Marcus [Bingham] and Julius [Marble] … I don’t mean in the post, either. I’m talking about in the ball screens. That was our big problem.”
The Michigan guards and wings drove at will. When they missed, Izzo noted, they’d get their own rebound or kick it out for open threes.
Michigan forward Terrance Williams nailed a trio of them in his best showing of the year, which appeared to irk the MSU coach.
“Things happen in these games. Give them credit, I guess,” he said. “But Williams has hit six threes the whole big ten season. He goes 3-for-3. [DeVante’] Jones is shooting 17 percent and he hits one. That’s four of their seven.”
Jones was actually 32 percent heading into the game.
Regardless, he and the Wolverines did a lot right against the Spartans on both ends of the floor. Izzo blamed part of it on point guard A.J. Hoggard being sick, noting it limited him to 11 minutes. He also added that guard Tyson Walker wore down due to a knee injury.
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“We did not guard dribble penetration at all. Some of it was our ball screen defense. Some of it was we tried to play A.J.,” Izzo continued. “He’s been out since Saturday, and I probably shouldn’t have played him. But we tried a little bit. He’s been sick … definitely missed him defensively. He’s probably our best defender.
“Even when he played in first half a couple minutes, he was dying. He has tonsil[itis] really bad. He tried to go. We’ll do better. I am disappointed by the way be played, and yet don’t know how much A.J. [missing] had to do with some of that.
But Michigan “played better than us, shot better than us and moved the ball better than us” he added in giving some praise. And at the end of the night, Izzo admitted, the better team won.
The Spartans lost for the sixth time in eight Big Ten games and dropped into a sixth-place tie with Michigan and Rutgers after beating Purdue Saturday.
“I don’t know how you come off a game like Saturday and then come down to your rival [and play like this],” Izzo said. “Like I said, the first five minutes I thought we played pretty well. The ball was moving, and we were running our break. Then, all of a sudden, we didn’t do any of it.
“We did not play well enough in any area to win the game. They did, and they deserved to win the game.”
