Tom Izzo Postgame Quotes
11/5/1999 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Nov. 5, 1999
Coach Tom Izzo Postgame Audio
EAST LANSING, Mich. - It's hard to judge on what happened. The most encouraging things to me were the 35 assists and the fact that we had some seniors in A.J. Granger and Morris Peterson who let a freshman have a great night, and he had a great night but I thought it took a lot of heart from our juniors and seniors. Andre Hutson, David Thomas and Charlie Bell all distributed the ball real well.
On a negative note, I don't think we contested shots. That was something we were a little concerned about from last year and put a point of emphasis on it this season. We will be putting dramatically more emphasis on it in the coming week. They were able to hit some threes because we didn't contest their shots, and that's not the way we are going to play.
I thought that we ran pretty well. I thought that David Thomas did a pretty good job for his first time in front of people. As I said, I think we have a better chance at being a better offensive team compared to last season. What will concern me is whether we will be as good of a defensive team. We tried to go inside to Andre early and I thought that he responded pretty well.
It's just hard to get a read on the game. This team played North Carolina State just two days ago. You never know in these games. I think they have some really nice players, but they might be tired. There are so many intangibles that it makes it tough to base this win with those factors. I thought that we accomplished some things that we wanted to. We were able to play a lot of people and get them some quality minutes. We tried to evenly space that out as best we could. I guess now you can see why J.R. was so important to get back. He is going to be a very exciting player before he is done here.
Inside, I was smiling a lot. Some of the moves he (Jason Richardson) made were wonderful. Even Morris said they were great and for Morris to say so, they must have been pretty good. He did a good job of spotting up, and he did a good job of rebounding. I was pleased that Aloysius was able to do a great job of boarding during the second half.
I can promise you that our freshman still have a long way to go. They didn't check like you have to check in this program and they'll be the first to admit it. We're going to work on that, it's just that we haven't had a lot of time to do that so far. Especially in J.R.'s case since it has been such a tough couple of weeks. Having your head in it and everything is really hard to do. It's just like our zone offense, we still have a long way to go. It looked real robotic at times, but the freshmen are going to be really good players.
We didn't play Andreas or Wolfe. Both of them are currently injured. We are giving some consideration to redshirting both of them. It has not been determined yet, because we have 11 days of practice to evaluate them. We will try to get a feel for where they are and where we are and go from there. Andreas has a foot injury and Wolfe has a deep thigh bruise, so he should be back in a couple of days.
David Thomas isn't going to play 40 minutes a game so the development of Brandon Smith is very important. We are also looking at using Charlie Bell at the point. One, at the place we play, two, with the teams we play, three with the timing of the teams we play and how the schedule is made with games really close to each other, we are definitely going to need more players at that position.
You were able to see what I've seen in practice all along with Jason Richardson. He is a better shooter than maybe I anticipated when we recruited him. I'm really pleased because he has been that way in practice and shot really well tonight.