Post Game Quotes: UMES
12/9/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
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MSU head coach Tom Izzo
Opening Statement...
Well, there was definitely some real good, and a little bit of bad. I thought we got off to a decent start. One of our goals was the dribble penetration and especially Denzel (Valentine) and Marvin (Clark Jr.), I thought he did a great job. In all honesty, Denzel was a little sick, and he didn't play with the same vigor, but he still played good. But he was sick last night and during the pregame walk through today, I could really notice it. I thought we had some great looks. Twelve-for-22 from 3, and he missed three really good ones. 25 assists on 27 baskets, I thought every one of them were right. There were some really great passes. Very unselfish plays, and yet we had nine turnovers with about six minutes left in the game and ended up with 15. We were leading the rebounding thing, and we just get sloppy. It's the number of guys we're playing, and some of it I thought when I had Denzel and Tum (Tum Nairn Jr.), which was often, more often with Tum, we're just not as good, which is bound to happen. That's probably a negative, and we held them down field-goal percentage wise, they're not a great shooting team, but I thought we did a pretty good job on that, too. Give them credit, because they ran that shot clock down a lot and that hurt us too that we couldn't get going so we pressured a little more, got a little bit of that. Good news for us is that party is over now. The next three games, they're going to get tougher and tougher, especially the one Saturday, then we got Big Ten, so we got a little up and down schedule, more up than down. We're trying to get guys play the game instead of the score of the opponent, which is easier said than done. All-in-all, it was a good win for us and we're moving on.
On the team's unselfishness...
I think a couple times when we try to make an extra pass, we should've taken it to the hole, but that's a good problem to have, and one that we'll get better at. Our execution was better, then we got a little sloppy. We didn't shoot as well in the first half, which was disappointing, but we shot better in the second half, which was encouraging. I'm not sure we need to work on our offense as much as we wanted to since we got zoned a lot, but we did some good things in the zone too. Probably the only area that I was really, really disappointed in was our offensive rebounding. We're just not sending the guys to the boards. As I think about our reunion team coming in, hell they had more offensive rebounds getting dressed than our guys get in the game.
On Marvin Clark and Eron Harris...
I thought the most encouraging was Eron Harris, and second was Marvin Clark (Jr.) were the two guys. Eron looked a lot better until he started reverting back to one-on-one then he had four turnovers. But I thought he shot it well, and played much better defense. We did make some strides, because no matter how they played, they are athletic, and very good penetration team, and I thought we did a good job on that. Marv definitely did some good things. Kenny (Goins) still I don't think is the same with the nose, and he has to get used to some things.
On the defensive effort...
The defensive effort was better because the dribble penetration, not because of the shooting, it's not a great shooting team. We put a little pressure on them. It was more to get us going and maybe wear them down a bit. I thought there were some pluses to it. Somehow we got to utilize our depth, and I think you'll start seeing more and more of that as we get our rotation down.
On what to do with his rotation after 14 Spartans played tonight...
Tonight, I would have gone less than 12 but when you get a big lead, you look at two things. I looked at some of the guys -- if you guys were at practice for a long time, you'd see how well our scout team is playing. Alvin (Ellis III) has gone to the scout team, Matt Van Dyk has been unbelievable, Colby (Wollenman) has been unbelievable. So you know, the head in me tells me to do one thing, the heart in me tells me to do another. They know it. They know the situation. I've got to get more guys time. Like I said, it's a good problem. There's always injuries or foul trouble or illnesses or things that come up. We've gotten a lot of guys some minutes. We do have to get a rotation down and I should just shut up about it because I'm killing myself. We're trying. DJ's (associate head coach Dwayne Stephens) done a hell of a job. We're trying to get our minutes back down in the first half on paper and see what we can do with that. We've got some work to do but what it's done is it's made it a real together team. Those guys are up on the bench pulling for one another like nobody's tomorrow. I mean, 25 assists on 27 baskets kind of tells you as good a statement about what kind of team we've got as anything. It's been that way all year. We've got to be close to 80 percent of our baskets coming from assists, which is almost ridiculous.
On if he will be a part of honoring the 2000 team on Saturday against Florida...
You know I haven't figured that out yet totally. David Thomas has done a great job getting the guys back. I'm so looking forward to it. As always, what happens on these things is unfortunately I've got a game to coach and I know they wouldn't want it any other way. So how much I'll be involved until after the game, I don't know. This place should be electric. I think we'll have our football team there, I think we'll have our reunion team there. We'll have a good team in Florida there, a Saturday game. This thing should be rocking and that's the way it's supposed to be. Yes, I'm looking forward to it but I'm trying to keep things in perspective and understand that the job I've got to do first and then the fun I can have if we do the right job.
Junior Guard Eron Harris
On his overall assessment of the team's performance…
We turned the ball over a little bit more than we should. It was a good win but every game there is something to learn from. Today we learned that we need to play all the way through the game. We're going to put this game in the past now and look ahead to Saturday, it's a big game.
