Michigan State vs. Northeastern Postgame Quotes
12/18/2016 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
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Michigan State Head Coach Tom Izzo
Opening statement...
Well today is one of the harder parts of the job. We didn't play very good, but give them all the credit. They played better than us in just about every fashion. They hit some shots just before halftime and a couple of those were threes. Give them credit, they made them. We didn't defend them very well, but the game, as average as we played, I thought we had a chance. I don't know when it was, maybe nine minutes left, we were up six, and they came down and their guy hit a big three. Give T.J. Williams credit on that. That was a tough three. I thought Tum Tum (Lourawls Nairn Jr.) was guarding him alright. Then we come down and our best free throw shooter gets fouled and Cassius (Winston) misses the one and one. In that stretch I think it was potentially four free throws that we missed. Tum had a layup, Kenny (Goins) missed that dunk, and we had three turnovers. One for a layup. That was the game, I thought, for us. Even though he missed a lot of free throws, he's the best free throw shooter I have by far. Cassius played extremely well, even though Williams is a very good player. I thought for the most part we defended him very well. We kicked him out of the paint and kept him off the foul line until the end. On the other side of it, we got to the foul line 26 times and I'm just amazed at some of the guys that missed free throws. When I think of Eron Harris and Cassius Winston and Matt McQuaid, in my mind they're 85 or 90 percent shooters. We missed three front ends of the one-and-one. So we put that all together and we're not good enough to beat a team when we're missing dunks and free throws and layups. We can't take anything away from the effort that Northeastern gave, they played harder. They outrebounded us most of the night. In the second half we picked it up a bit. It was a tough matchup. Nick had some trouble guarding the ball screen because they had a good five man that could pick and pop and shoot. That created some problems for us. All in all we just didn't play well enough.
On why Eron Harris did not play in the final minutes…
He didn't play well enough. There are things that you can see. You can see missed shots or this or that. There are a lot of things that you can't see. Right now we're struggling with a couple guys that I think have to play well for us to win, Eron and Kenny. We're just not getting enough out of them, especially Kenny. So, I changed up the lineup at halftime. It wasn't all good, it wasn't all bad, but I might change it again. I just wasn't satisfied with the level of toughness that we didn't display. That is never something that this program stands for. We need to go out and play harder I guess. It wasn't just the freshmen either. Nick struggled because of a tough matchup. Josh and Cassius were okay. Some of our veterans need to play better if we're going to be any good.
On the frustration of playing poorly after a week of good practice…
It's frustrating. And like I said, there's nothing more than they got loose balls and we didn't, they made shots and we didn't. Layups and dunks, those are inexcusable. Some of our best free throw shooters just missed some free throws. When you're up six, you've got a chance to really extend it and we just didn't do that. Credit goes to Bill and his team. They did a better job.
On positive points from this game…
I can take nothing out of this game personally. We didn't play well enough to win. Things I've been preaching all year. Winning and losing. Some of the games that we've lost, it's come down to the small things. I have not been satisfied with the play of a couple guys. I have not been satisfied with the upperclassmen. I have not been satisfied with the toughness that they play with. What I take out of it, we need to get much tougher. We need to play much harder. Teams can't come in here and shoot 50 percent from the three. But, in fairness, it gets misleading. You look at things and you see a guy wide open in the corner and you don't realize it's because of the ball screen and the lack of covering the ball screen the right way. So, somebody had to help and somebody gets a wide open three. So, it can get very hard to understand why I'm upset with some and not others, but I told my team. I thought that Matt Van Dyk played hard. I though Cassius Winston played hard. Tum and (Joshua) Langford were okay, but we just had eleven guys that didn't play hard enough.
On the effects of the extended time between games…
Oh don't even go there. It was, first of all, probably the same for them, I have no idea. Second of all, I was honest with you. I thought our practices were great. Young teams need to learn to bring it, but it wasn't the young team that didn't bring it. It was some of the old team that didn't bring it. We just didn't translate it from practice to game. That's the way it is. We got outrebounded by a couple even though we were outrebounding them in the second half. We did a better job on that. Like I said, you can't miss dunks, layups, and free throws. We probably still scored enough points to win. If we make a few more dunks, layups, and free throws we score 80 easy. It was our defense that let us down with second shots and effort related things.
On the ability to close out on outside shots on defense...
There was one that was a ball screen that we got to too late because our guy didn't step up on the ball screen. So it looks like the defender didn't defend in the corner, but it was the ball screen guy, not the defender. So that's hard to explain to you without knowing, so especially when it's hard enough to even see. But the coach knows. So, it's one of the issues we have with Nick. This was a tough game for him. He can be pretty good offensively even though that turnover was a tough turnover. But, he can be pretty good offensively even though you do need to play both sides of the court. That's been a struggle. We've managed it with certain teams and this was a team that we didn't. That [Jeremy] Miller kid can pick and pop, the other kid could pick and roll. They put a speedster or a shooter in there and it just created some problems for us and we were not able to overcome it.
On Northeastern's transition defense…
They did a decent job, although we got some layups in transition too, and some others - we missed those. I didn't think we ran as good as we could run. In the first half they were shooting pretty good and we weren't rebounding very well. So if you can't get clean rebounds you don't get fast breaks, that's the way it works.
Why are you so concerned with Eron Harris? He's sitting next to me because he didn't play very good. Period. So I don't know what the deal is. I don't mean to jump you about it but, you want to know why he didn't play? He didn't guard, he didn't play very hard, he didn't play very smart, he took a couple bad shots, and he wasn't playing the way he has to play. So I mean, if Harris doesn't do that this week, then he won't be playing this week either. If he does, he will. It's not all on Eron Harris, but seniors have to rise up and I don't know. I don't know if you want to make this a quarterback controversy or what we want to do, but as honest as I can be, he didn't play very well. Bring it up again and I'll say the same damn thing.
On Cassius Winston's performance…
No, Cassius Winston played the best offense-defense on our team today. His defense has improved enormously and that's why I started him the second half. I actually almost started my best defensive team and if I had,Tum would have probably been in there with him. We might see some of that. I thought Josh Langford played better defensively second half, but if he can't go to Nick, or keep Nick in the game, we have some offensive limitations right now in some of those forwards. Kyle Ahrens played better in some ways, but he struggled to rebound the ball. He gets one all night and part of that is just size. You got a five guy against a six guy, so we're just going to have to try do a better job and gain rebounds. We need to get more rebounds from our wings. Harris did do a decent job rebounding the ball at times. But, hey, we had a six-point-lead with everything going our way. They hit a big shot. If you look at the next three minutes, everything went wrong. It had nothing to do with Harris or this guy. We missed some free throws, we missed a dunk. I mean, we missed a dunk. We missed a layup. We are not good enough to overcome those things. It has nothing to do with anything except the guys have to play better and we have to coach better. Give Northeastern a lot of credit because they made some tough shots. The one before halftime got right in his face. The one where we were six up, I thought Tum was pretty much right there with a guy going left and takes the shot. One of them in the corner was pretty contested. They made some plays and we didn't make some plays and that was the difference.
Northeastern head coach Bill Coen
Opening Statement…
First and foremost I want to, you know, thank Coach Izzo and the Athletic Director Mark Hollis and my Athletic Director Peter Roby for putting together this winter showdown idea. I give Coach Izzo all of the credit. Not too many coaches will take their teams off campus and visit a non-power five opponent on their home court in a non-neutral situation. So, we have the utmost respect for this program and it was such an honor to be able to compete in this environment against this level program. I tell my guys each and every year that we want to compete against the very best that the country has to offer to make sure that we can measure ourselves and get better. We want to compete against National Championship caliber programs and that's what Michigan State is and always has been. You know, our game plan tonight was to try and stay fundamentally sound, to play a clean basketball game with limited turnovers, and play team-branded basketball on the offensive end. For the most part I thought our guys did that. You know, the building got a little loud. Michigan State has a lot of pride so they made their run, but we have a couple of seniors that settled us down to make big plays to get us back into a groove and get us back to playing Northeastern basketball. I thought we played fairly well tonight and I think we closed out the game well making our free throws, which is huge for us.
On matching up with Michigan State athletically…
You know, I think we match up in length. But, you know, the physicality, the Big Ten physicality was something we were certainly concerned about. But I thought we showed a competitive spirit today even with a smaller line up at times, being able to battle on the backboards. That was one of our goals, to really compete on the backboards and I think we did a good job at that tonight.
On preparation to play Michigan State…
I'm not really sure I identified that. I knew what I was concerned about. First and foremost was defensive transition. We wanted to make sure we got back. I think Michigan State year in and year out, especially with Tum Tum (Lourawls Nairn Jr.) they really do a good job of pushing the ball and making easy baskets in transition so that was our big focus. And then, they run their sets really, really well. They're one of the best screening teams in the country. So we had to have physical and mental toughness to fight through screens. Then, we had to try to finish possessions which wasn't an easy thing to do. I thought we did those three things well enough to earn a victory.
On Alex Murphy's performance…
You know he's an experienced player and he's been an outstanding leader in our locker room, he's got a great voice. He talks to the guys constantly. Before, during the game, before the game, just trying to settle us down, but he's got a great skill set as well. He's got an inside and outside game. He's tough enough that he can go and get 15 rebounds at UCONN, and he's versatile enough that he can go and make multiple three's in a game and he's not scared of the moment. So we needed all of those elements today to earn a victory.
On what it means to get huge wins against huge programs in college basketball…
You know, it's a confidence builder. Both of those programs have won national championships. Both of them have a ton of pride and tradition. You know, it's something that we aspire to be. We wanna be that consistent and that excellent. In order to get there I think you have to challenge yourself against those guys and measure yourself, you see what you can do. For our guys it's a confidence builder, and we're trying to get ready for a very tough CAA schedule and get better. We have a young team and we have a lot of new parts trying to grow and actually our big step was winning at Vermont. You know, it's something that was a very difficult game for us and kind of snuck one out at the end and I thought that was a moment that we held onto coming into tonight.
