No. 3 Michigan State Hosts Southern Utah on Saturday Night
12/8/2017 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
East Lansing, Mich. -
Michigan State's men's basketball team is back in action on Saturday, Dec. 9, hosting Southern Utah University at the Breslin Center. Tipoff is slated for 6 p.m.
The game will be shown live on the Big Ten Network, with Kevin Kugler calling the play-by-play and Shon Morris serving as the color analyst. The Spartan Sports Network radio call can be heard on one of 38 affiliates and on the web at SpartanSportsNetwork.com, with Will Tieman handling the play-by-play and Matt Steigenga serving as the color analyst.
Michigan State, ranked No. 3 in the Associated Press and USA Today Coaches polls, improved to 8-1 overall and 2-0 in the Big Ten Conference with a 62-52 win at Rutgers on Dec. 5. It was the seventh-straight win for the Spartans. After playing four of its last six games away from home, the Spartans will play six of its next seven games at the Breslin Center.
In the win at Rutgers, sophomore guard/forward Miles Bridges scored a game-high 21 points to lead three players in double figures, with sophomore guard Joshua Langford adding 15 points and freshman forward Jaren Jackson Jr. contributing 10 points and eight blocked shots. Jackson's eight blocks tied the MSU single-game record and established a freshman record for rejections in a game.
Bridges leads Michigan State in scoring with 15.4 points and is second on the team with 6.4 rebounds. The Preseason Big Ten Player of the Year, he has scored at least 20 points three times this season. He ranks tied for ninth in the Big Ten in scoring and 14th in rebounding.
Michigan State's sophomore class -- Bridges, Langford, Cassius Winston and Nick Ward -- have helped to lead the way for the Spartans. Through nine games, that quartet has accounted for 66.8 percent of the team's scoring (477 of 714 points), and 41.8 percent of its rebounds
Michigan State has won seven-straight games by an average of 19.9 points per game, led in large part by its defense and rebounding. During the team's last six games, MSU is allowing only 54.2 points per game and opponents are only shooting 30.2 percent from the floor. Overall this season, the Spartans are limiting opponents to 33.2 percent shooting from the field. MSU ranks No. 1 nationally in field goal percentage defense and tied for No. 13 in scoring defense (61.1 ppg). The Spartans have a +12.6 rebound advantage in the last seven games and have only been out-rebounded once this season. MSU ranks No. 12 in the country in rebound margin (+11.0 overall) and No. 2 in blocked shots per game (7.9).
This will be the first meeting between MSU and Southern Utah, a member of the Big Sky Conference. The Spartans have an all-time record of 5-2 against teams from the Big Sky. The Thunderbirds are coached by Todd Simon, a Central Michigan graduate who is native of Fowler, Mich. He has ties to a pair of MSU players, having coached Ben Carter when he was an assistant at UNLV and he coached Gavin Schilling in high school at Findlay Prep.
Tom Izzo Press Conference Transcript
Opening statement...
It's a good thing you guys are here today instead of yesterday because Nick (Ward) and Cassius (Winston) quit yesterday. (laughter) They came back today and so we're excited about that.
On getting a new day to clear their (Ward and Winston) heads...
You know what, in all honesty, it's just so hard to explain to everybody but, my relationship with guys has been...I guess you could say adversarial. I think it's unique. And when I say unique is, I don't mind if a player gets mad at me because I get mad at him. The respect factor is I understand it, if it goes too far then I do what I gotta do, you know? And you know, that night Nick was awesome to be honest with you guys. I mean he was upset, Nick was frustrated he was getting double-teamed - he's getting double-teamed a lot. He ain't the greatest guy at handling those kind of things yet, but that's part of the growth process. I could show you texts from that night it was...he even wished me safe travels the next day - I thought he'd hope I'd drive off a bridge or something. And then Cassius is...my only thing with Cassius is I think he's made such enormous progress. I just...I don't want anybody to go back and you know what? You laugh at me - and some of you may - but you look at what happened in college basketball the last couple of days, there's a lack of focus and there's, you know, and too much noise. And those two things I'm just going to try keep out the best I can.
On if this happens to almost every player at some point in their collegiate career and if it's comparative to a kid getting upset at their parents...
In my program it does. You guys really want to know something off the record? Go call Steven (Izzo) tonight - you can do that on the record - and ask him how mad he is at me. Let's see it's - the phone, the car, the homework - that guy hates me 90 percent of the time, you know, but I love him to death. Just like Nick and Cass - love them to death.
I saw something when we got to the arena. We had a great day of practice, we had a great day that day...it's just a sick feeling, it's what I'm supposed to do - I'm supposed to analyze. And so did I push the envelope a little bit once I saw that? 100 percent, yes. But it's...I tell ya it's hard to keep guys focused in on what they gotta do for a long period of time and that was a game we couldn't lose. You know we couldn't lose that game. So, you know, when I say honestly, I mean you guys talk to them and you know me, I don't tell them what to say, so it was nothing. It was just a, `hey, come back to earth and figure out what you've been doing so well and continue to do that because it's been successful for you.'
On if this is the time of year Coach Izzo has to fight that type of complacency...
Yeah. Jud Heathcote - God rest his soul - always used to tell me that, you know, it's the finals and Christmastime that are the hardest. Who wants to take finals? None of you guys, I didn't - and who wants to be up here practicing and that when everybody else is home. So those are the two times that I think are the most difficult as far as keeping guys focused in that way.
Now if you're winning and you're doing well there's everybody around, sometimes those times are hard to focus in on because everybody is yapping at ya - I mean students and everybody else. So as I told you, the one thing that I will say with this group - they aren't as experienced as you think on handling those kind of things. I mean, when Miles (Bridges) wanted to play out in Portland and I said, `you know I don't know', you know the second game even I said, `you know why do you want to play? You may play a few minutes, it might hurt your average, it might do this,' he said, `I just want to win. I want to win a championship, I haven't won one yet.' Kind of a cool thing to say. I said `you're in.' You know I didn't change that immediately but, that's this group. Still have got a lot to learn and a lot to realize how to handle some of these things and so do I.
On if there's a silver lining with the close game at Rutgers...
Always a silver lining when you can make a point and win. I'm not ready to be Jud and, you know, I'm not ready to lose a game and feel like that accomplished that. I'm trying to avoid that before those things happen, if they're under our control. And trust me when I say this, we didn't come out and just not care, I mean but you remember - a turnover right away, not running the court, just the things that you see. The good part is we showed them the film, we explained to them on the airplane ride back home, and yet we still played against a team that's very physical and tough. I asked the guys at Notre Dame - I was on the road last night - you know, what happened? Everybody is saying the same thing, you know, we just lost a little concentration - did this, did that. So I want to make sure that if we lose, it's because we get beat, not because we lose concentration.
On seeing three of the top 10 teams in the nation lose this week and using that as a coaching moment...
Yeah that should be...if our guys would stay off Twitter and off their phones - because they aren't looking at scores, they're looking at what people say about them - they would see that those teams lost. I gotta tell them because that's just the way it is now.
I think that was a little eye-opening to them some of the things that are happening and some of the people that it happened to. I mean Kansas losing in Kansas City is not the norm. Florida losing two in a row at home is not the norm. There are going to be a lot of - I don't know if they're called upsets anymore because there is so much parity, but I thought a couple of those games were upsets.
On playing two conference games then getting a little break from Big Ten play...
What blew my mind was when my assistants told me on the way home that we're only two games in and there's only three teams undefeated. I mean that's bizarre. But I do think only having 16 left would be good except we're cutting it a week early so we really didn't accomplish a lot. I'm feeling good we're one of the 2-0 teams. I'm also, as I look ahead which I don't let myself do very often, I also see six of the last nine games on the road in February and home twice. So I think it balances out. We've got to win road games. You've got to win at home but you've got to win a lot of road games and that was one road game we had to win.
On focusing on themselves...
Well we are a little bit. You know we gave them yesterday off, today we went actually kind of light and tomorrow we'll go hard then we've got that unique thing of having finals coming up. We did go through the schedule today and as always, as always happens, half of them waited until Thursday and Friday and so that makes it a little more delicate in what we do because we think we need some practice time. So we set it up. I think it's going to work out great for us. We've got to get through this game Saturday and then I think those next five-six days I think we're pretty set on what we're going to do unless some final changes or something. I think we're going to be able to practice during the day which means we'll be able to go out on the road at night recruiting.
On how the rest of the team handled the situation with Nick Ward...
You know, as I said, I will just say this; there's been a lot worse incidents here with Nick. But I think Nick has come as far as...I mean Nick and Cassius have made the most improvements on the things the needed to - their bodies, their conditioning, their strength. Nick is so much better on ball screens normally and Nick's gotta work on the mental part of Nick. You know he's gotta work on not getting so angry over things you know and you can laugh but I had to work on that too - and you probably say you still should, but early on when we played Michigan I swear I lost those games for us because I didn't handle it very well. He's learning how to deal with it. The double-team thing bothers him - I don't know why it bothers him, but I think it frustrates him. We've got to do a better job of getting him the ball too. We saw some times that we didn't get him the ball so that probably angers any big guy a little bit. But I swear to you, by the time we got home after the plane ride home it was like, shut the switch off and he was 100 miles an hour. And Cass is Cass.
On Miles handling the situation well as a leader...
Well you know what that's good - I didn't know. That is good because you get on him a little bit but nobody made it a big, big deal. I don't know what they said when I left it, but that's good. Those are the things that are going to make us better in the long run and that's all I care about - getting better every day. Some of it will be basketball, some of it will be mentally, some of it will be how we deal with different things that are thrown at us and we've got to get good at them because we're going to get a lot of things thrown at us - we're probably not going undefeated so we're going to have to deal with a lot of things.
On Eron Harris... I told him, `once you got out of my program you let yourself go to hell.' But he...it's the first week that he really worked out with us...well I shouldn't say that - a little bit last week and now he's almost going full-go. It's pretty exciting. It's almost freakish how his athleticism looks the same. I just keep telling him, `take it easy,' you know. The goal is that he's ready to go by Christmas, so that's two-three weeks away, and then hopefully he's off to some league or doing something. But that's why he wanted to get these two-three weeks of work with us. But it's been great. I just absolutely love that kid.
