Tom Izzo says Michigan State basketball has a problem despite 10th straight win

Posted by Admin January 16, 2025 Basketball

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EAST LANSING — Tom Izzo arrived to his postgame news conference heated.

Never mind No. 12 Michigan State basketball’s 10th straight win. Or the Spartans’ sixth in a row to open Big Ten play. Or their 15-2 record, all benchmarks they reached Wednesday night that Izzo’s teams haven’t hit in the six years since his last Final Four trip.

The numbers burning in Izzo’s brain after MSU’s 90-85 victory over Penn State were far more recent and far more worrisome.

The 41 second-half points yielded in a home win over Washington six days earlier. The 40 second-half points given up on the road Sunday at Northwestern. And the tipping point, the 49 second-half points allowed against the Nittany Lions that brought Izzo’s ire to a boil.

“That’s a problem, OK?,” Izzo said. “That is a problem.”

The continued lack of consistency in performance irked him so much he threatened to give his players “Be the Same” T-shirts to replace the “Be Different” mantra they unveiled not even a week ago.

“So that means we cannot handle success right now,” Izzo said, his voice rising and emphasizing his frustration. “So quit saying where we are. Because we’re not anywhere yet.

“We’re a good basketball team that’s got a long, long, long, LONG ways to go to get better. OK? Period. That’s where we are.”

Classic midseason Izzo.

It comes from the lessons of his previous 29 seasons, seeing teams he felt could become great in January sometimes rise and sometimes begin to crumble around this point of the long winter.

MSU opened its 2018-19 season with an 18-2 record and nine straight victories to begin Big Ten play, all of which were part of a 13-game win streak for Cassius Winston, Xavier Tillman and Co. That team would drop three in a row to snap the streak, then go on to win seven of its last eight regular-season games to win the Big Ten title outright, tear through the conference tournament with three more victories and eventually knock off Zion Williamson and Duke in the Elite Eight before falling to Texas Tech in the Final Four in Minneapolis.

As much as the four wins over the past 12 days in return to Big Ten action have shown these Spartans possess the capability to follow the path of some of his best, Izzo also spots warning signs of complacency and potential for an unraveling.

Senior captain Jaden Akins knows as well. He was part of MSU’s previous longest win streak during his freshman year, a 14-2 start to the 2021-22 season that included a 5-0 start to the Big Ten season and a nine-game win streak before a Jan. 15, 2022 loss to Northwestern. That team would lose 11 of its final 15 regular-season conference games to finish 11-9, lose to Purdue in the Big Ten tournament semifinals and then end the season with a second-round NCAA tournament loss to Duke.

A lack of consistency and failure to finish late in close games proved to be that squad’s undoing. And it’s a lesson Akins wants his younger teammates to understand.

“The games are gonna get bigger and bigger. You just gotta be more focused and ready to go,” said Akins, who finished with 16 points and six rebounds against Penn State while converting a critical three-point play in the final 30 seconds. “I’m gonna do my best to tell everybody what to expect going through it. But it’s that time of year.”

MSU hosts red-hot No. 20 Illinois on Sunday at Breslin Center (noon, CBS). It kicks off a virtually nonstop stretch of big games ahead over the final seven weeks of the regular season.

“Right now, from what I saw the last two times I watched Illinois, we got the Celtics or the Lakers coming in here,” Izzo said. “So we got a lot of work to do in three or four days.”

It starts with getting things shored up defensively. MSU continued to battle fouling issues in the second half against the Nittany Lions (12- 6, 2-5), who took advantage of 13 fouls by the Spartans to go 13-for-16 at the free-throw line. Opponents have gone 50-for-65 on free throws in the second half of the past four games.

“If we give up 40 points in the second half on Sunday,” junior guard Tre Holloman said, “we’re going to lose.”

Penn State also got hot as MSU struggled with switches on the perimeter, shooting 65.2% and going 6 for 9 from 3-point range in the final 20 minutes. D’Marco Dunn drained two early in the second half as the Nittany Lions pulled within two to erase most of the Spartans’ 10-point halftime lead. Zach Hicks drained all four of his triples in the final 5:04 to again pare a 10-point deficit as PSU closed within four with inside a minute to play.

“I think it was one of my worst defensive performances,” said redshirt freshman guard Jeremy Fears Jr., who also put blame on himself for getting a first-half technical foul. “But just going out there, we gotta do a better job of switching, talking and just making sure we’re more on the same page.”

Said Izzo: “We did enough offensively. It was just defensively we didn’t do enough. We either fouled or we gave up wide-open shots.”

Though he wasn’t handing out many flowers, Izzo pointed to a few strong spots. Senior Frankie Fidler’s team-leading 18 points were his most as a Spartan, and he grabbed four of his seven rebounds on the offensive glass. MSU finished with 24 assists on 32 made baskets, and the Spartans lowered their turnovers (10) while continuing to get balanced scoring. All 10 players had four or more points and six of them contributed between seven and nine points. They also continued to make free throws at a high rate, going 20-for-24.

It still was not enough to assuage Izzo’s bigger concerns.

“You can bet that I’ll never be harder on a player than I’m gonna be on myself tonight,” he said, “which is gonna filter into our whole group and see if we can not panic.”

Akins said it is up to him and his teammates to dial in to reach their goals, not just to appease their coach.

“I don’t feel like he has to get us motivated. I feel like we motivate ourselves,” he said. “I mean, we know what’s at stake. We know what games are coming, and we’ve gotta stay locked in and focused as a team and take one day at a time.”

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.

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