Coach Tom Izzo met with the media following Michigan State’s 70-55 loss to Indiana on Tuesday night at Assembly Hall. Watch the press conference in high-definition quality video in the embedded media player below:
Quotes after the jump.
Opening Statement:
“I thought the game was kind of lax there off the bat. We just didn’t do things that we had worked on. We knew two things: dribble penetration would be a key and defend without fouling. Those things we did a poor job of but give Indiana credit. They did a great job. I thought [Victor] Oladipo did a great job in there and they worked on some things with their big guys. We just did not respond the way I would have like to have responded. We struggled early, we struggled turning it over. We didn’t get some guys into rebounding tonight. So we didn’t defend them, we didn’t rebound, we didn’t execute. We missed some good shots, I have no problem with that. We missed some good shots inside and it was a physical game. The whole thing came down to 18 free throws to our five at halftime. The dribble penetration and fouling, the drivers were the two biggest cues on our scouting report. For the first time, we did not respond very well to the scouting report. I think Indiana deserves a lot of credit for putting us in that position. They did a great job of moving the ball and just driving us and we didn’t respond very well.”
On team performance:
“I’m disappointed with Keith [Appling] because he’s been playing better and he had three turnovers at critical times tonight. I think Keith’s a better player than that. I think the crowd got to us a little bit and we couldn’t call things. We didn’t do a very good job reading things so that will be a good learning experience. Brandon Wood struggled a little bit. Defensively, we weren’t very strong there.”
On Victor Oladipo:
“We knew we weren’t going to guard him one-on-one, but it was our centers not stepping where they needed to be stepping. We put something in a couple weeks ago and we’ve defended a couple of great guards, but tonight we just kind of stayed in I-formation like it was a football play. Their center set a pick and my guy was right behind him. That’s not the way we had worked on it so we lost a little focus on that. Even though it looked like the guards were getting beat, we were playing it a certain way and other players weren’t playing very well either.”
On feelings entering the game:
“I felt good. I told you, it’s been a long two weeks and this team has given me just about everything they can give me, but tonight we didn’t play Spartan basketball. But, not taking away from Indiana. They outplayed us, out-rebounded us, drove the ball better, but I think we cut it to six. We missed that free throw, they got the rebound and I think that’s when they shot in the three and that was kind of the nail in the coffin even though there was some time left. But, we can’t keep fighting from behind and it all started with our poor start with fouling, fouling, fouling.”
On Indiana:
“I think they played well up at Minnesota and now they’re on a little bit of a roll now and I couldn’t be happier for them. They played well, they deserved to win. I look at this for us: you have to play at a high level to win big games on the road. There’s no question that Indiana on the road is a very tough game on the road. You’ve got to play at the highest level. We’ve been playing at a pretty high level for about seven games in a row. We had a little bit of a setback tonight.”
Filed to: Tom Izzo