Michigan State University Athletics
Tom Izzo Weekly Press Conference
12/12/2018 3:47:00 PM | Men's Basketball
Michigan State men's basketball head coach Tom Izzo met with the media earlier this week after the Spartans completed a stretch of six games in 16 days following a 63-59 win at Florida on Saturday.
The Spartans, 8-2 overall, winners of seven of the last eight games and ranked No. 9 in the country by the Associated Press, are in the midst of an 8-day break for final exams before returning to play on Sunday, Dec. 16 at home against Green Bay (5 p.m., BTN).
Opening Statement
This is a strange period of time, when you look at six games in 16 days and now two games in, what, 14 days. We just had a big staff meeting and we talked to our staff about what we're doing to do and how we're going to do it. I'm going to be on the road a lot – the next couple of days in St. Louis, Cleveland, all over the place – so we're trying to practice in the morning and get through finals. There will be some long days for us, but hopefully for the players, they can get a little rest.
When you look at these five, six games we just played, five of them on the road, the overview would be that it was successful. We learned at Louisville that we used later on. I think we learned things at Florida. We did a terrible job going against their press, which is normally not a problem for us. And yet we made some simple mistakes that I think we're going to be able to adjust. We've been to some difficult places to play. It was Fourth of July and Christmas down there (Florida). We'll put shirts and stuff on the students here, but they had everything for everybody. I think it was one of their bigger games in recent history so we've had to play in front of some rough crowds.
All of these things are going to benefit us; it's going to be how we handle this two-week period, with two games, not to have any let-down and to make sure that we're getting better because we haven't had this luxury either. We've normally had it where, Christmas, six, seven years ago, we'd have a long stretch and we'd get a lot done. This year, we have a game after Christmas and we start the Big Ten earlier than we used to start them, which was almost the seventh or eighth of January. This is the period of time we've got to get better. We've got to hone in on our offense, we've got to execute better, we can't have the little mental breakdowns we did defensively, you have to handle the press breakers a little better because once we get into the New Year, it will at least be a little more consistent where we're playing a game every three days.
When you have these kind of games on the road like we've had, there's been very little practice time to get better at Michigan State. It's been all about the opponent. I should have listened to a guy named Jim Boylen, not the one with the Bulls, the one with the Cavs, who said Al McGuire often said, scheduling is by far the most important part of the job. He put it over recruiting and everything else. And it was because you need time to prepare, you need time to wind down. If you have a big game, win or lose it, you're going to feel one way or another until the next game, so that next game better not be very tough. God rest his soul, but I must not have listened to him at all, because our schedule is not conducive to those things and now it gets a little better and hopefully we'll take advantage of it.
On what he's most pleased with and concerned with at this point in this season…
You just leave it with a positive, you want me to put the negative in there too.
I think what I've been pleasantly surprised with is we've been a little better defensively after the first couple of games than I thought. I have been really pleased with Nick (Ward), I think in general, he wasn't great the second half; I'm pleased that Cassius (Winston) has made great strides, Josh (Langford) too. Those three guys have made great strides on both ends of the floor. I was surprised that we were shooting the ball so well early and now we haven't shot it as well lately. I was disappointed that we didn't shoot the ball better from the line; I thought we'd be a very good free throw shooting team.
I've been disappointed with myself because I think the schedule hurt us with these practice times that haven't given our guys a true chance to get better as much as they needed to. I think that slowed our progress a little bit down and caught us.
The freshmen have been a slower to come than I was hoping, other than Aaron (Henry), but I haven't given them much of a chance either. That's another thing that the six BCS games, and all those tough games, and lack of practice time has really hurt the progress, so I think we could really help the freshmen this week. And I think we can get better. As we watched the film yesterday, I think the good news for me was, Cassius to me was out of gas. He wasn't bad; he was just a step off on everything. And he could watch the film and say "Gosh, I can't believe this or I did that." Or Nick, I didn't cut. We had a lot of guys that were playing a little both mentally and physically fatigued
On Kenny Goins being a "glue guy" and his performance this year…
Kenny's a guy that his confidence can get rattled, but when he's confident he's made some unbelievable passes. DJ was just saying to me up there, if Nick would post harder all the time and Kenny would have a little more confidence we think we can really take advantage of that. He was shooting the ball real good, and Kenny's a guy that really likes the game. To be great you have to really love and be obsessed with the game. If over Christmas we can turn the love into obsessed he could be a real asset to this year's team.
On addressing turnovers over the break…
I think Santa really left a piece of coal in my sock on that one, the turnover one, you know he really hasn't treated me very good on that one. I'm glad I have somebody I can blame for that now. It's a hard thing to work on other than being so demanding that if you turn it over, a crazy turnover, I'm just pulling you. Then you have confidence issues. Nobody is doing it on purpose, but that first half of the Florida game was a joke. I mean the ball was flying into places, I mean they threw two into the stands, it should have been a lawsuit. I can't explain that except we didn't do a very good job working on the press for a longer period of time because we didn't practice much. I'm hoping the practices will put us in those situations a little bit better, and it's probably an excuse but it's definitely the difference of us being good or great. I've said this for 20 years and I've always used football, the Super Bowl usually comes down to who turns it over the least. And it's not much different in our sport. 10, 12 turnovers is acceptable, in football one might be acceptable, but it does change the game. Last game we had 15, 16, but we had 10 in the first half. That's when we thought we could have really moved that game along. What happens when you get that many turnovers is you don't get that many shot attempts. We're shooting 50 percent as a team. That's where we can really improve. The last few games our 3-point shooting has gone way down, it's because we haven't taken as many of them. We talked today, why is that? We think it's because we got pressed a little bit, but normally we can go over a press and we're getting through that thing. I think it's partly fatigue, we were playing players a lot of minutes and we were wearing down a little bit. So I have a lot of good excuses, but if you have a direct line and you could tell Santa to bring me less turnovers I'd greatly appreciate that.
On the point guard situation and managing minutes for Cassius…
I think it's his coach, I don't think it's on him. I think he gave me everything he could give me until that game. I noticed it right away. I talked to him about it. I think he had trouble noticing it until after the game, but he felt it during the game and wasn't going to use it as an excuse, which I take my hat off to him. I need to do a better job. If it's gotta be Foster, if it's gotta be McQuaid. You can play 37 minutes, and you can play 33 minutes and have eight more minutes of break if I'd do a little better job. They had some big guards and Foster didn't feel as comfortable. So that was more on me than on him. I don't want him taking his foot off the gas, and on of the problems as we've worn down, he's not shooting as good from three. He's my best 3-point shooter. Usually what happens when you aren't shooting as weel from three, your legs go. It's more in conditioning. There's nothing wrong with his shot, I just need to get him some little breaks. It doesn't mean he's going to play 25 minutes, but those just need to be utilized better. You can't be afraid of it, and that's all going to fall on me to be honest.
On Kyle Ahrens and his play down the stretch against Florida…
He has the highest vertical on our team. We don't always expect that out of him, but he really does. The poor kid since his junior year of high school has had a broken leg, broken foot, broken this, broken that. He's probably the toughest kid, him and X, that I got. If we can keep Kyle healthy, the kid deserves to be healthy and he's tough. He's just getting his rhythm and his confidence back. I thought he played poorly against Iowa and after a good game at Louisville I thought his next two games were very average. We forget he's just trying to feel his way. Whether he starts and I bring McQuaid in, he's going to play a lot. He brings toughness, athleticism and he can shoot the ball. He can drive the ball and he can dunk the ball. That dunk was a big-time play because there was only like a half second left on the shot clock. He saved our bacon a little bit, but that's what a fourth-year junior should be doing. I just pray to God he stays healthy because if there's one kid who deserves to stay healthy it's him.
On first half turnovers…
I think one of them, fatigue, not in the Kansas game, but later on, we've played a lot of games in a short period of time. It's been a lot of big games. We haven't had a lot of room to relax and we've played some of those guys a lot of minutes. The other thing is, guys are just learning to play in their new roles. Everybody has to learn how to play in their role. All of those are good excuses. Do I think a lack of concentration, or a lack of understanding how important it is, I'd throw that at them a little bit. I've thrown it at them myself. It seems like we're going for plays that are triples instead of going for singles. We're going for home runs, we're going for doubles. If we just stay with the singles, against Iowa we have 28 out of 31 assists. We need to get back to moving the ball a little better. Teams are defending us a little bit differently; we're getting into some better teams. We're running into some things we haven't gone against much, the press was one of them. We need to get better at it. That's something to me I should take full responsibility for. It needs to be stressed more and we need to work on it. 10 and 11 in a half is not what great teams do. In my keys to the game, one was we needed to be physically tough because we thought Florida showed great toughness against West Virginia. But we also have to be mentally tough because that's what this kind of stretch does to you. I think mentally I'm not sure we're as gritty as we need to be and that's something we can take out of these six games and try to get better at.
On exam week being tough for the freshmen…
It can be brutal. I think once in a while a freshman has an exam last week, it just kinda depends on a person's schedule. Some of them will have three or four of them on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. There's nothing worse than that. It's part of the things you go through. I think the other side of that is they will get more time to study number one, but number two to work on their game. We're not on the road, they're going to be at home in their own beds. So, there's going to be some pluses with this week. I think it's been a good rule that there's no games allowed this week. I mean all of you here went through a time when you took finals for the first time. It's a tough issue, we have a game Sunday instead of Saturday. We played Oakland a lot on Saturday, they were really good and we had to drive down on a Friday night right after finals. So, this year we moved it to Sunday to give us an extra day after Finals. Although our toughest days of finals are Tuesday and Thursday, we still have some on Friday.
On possibly keeping Kyle as a starter and having McQuaid come off the bench…
I hadn't really thought about it because I didn't know when I was getting McQuaid back. The good news is Kyle and Matt are roommates and they get along like good roommates, not bad ones. We'll look at what's best for both of them to be honest, but haven't given it much thought yet. This week we'll have to make some decisions. It won't be a quarterback controversy because they'll both probably play similar minutes. Something that McQuaid gives to us is he is probably our glue guy. Kyle might be more instant offense than even Matt, because Matt kinda brings everyone together. He's another ball-handler in there and I guess if I thought about it I'd be leaning towards probably still him. I'll talk to both of them. We can talk about it. We can figure it out. I can figure it out with my staff and I don't think it'll be a decision that will rock anybody either way. The encouraging part is I think we'll get Matt back, although he's not 100 percent with his conditioning.
The Spartans, 8-2 overall, winners of seven of the last eight games and ranked No. 9 in the country by the Associated Press, are in the midst of an 8-day break for final exams before returning to play on Sunday, Dec. 16 at home against Green Bay (5 p.m., BTN).
Opening Statement
This is a strange period of time, when you look at six games in 16 days and now two games in, what, 14 days. We just had a big staff meeting and we talked to our staff about what we're doing to do and how we're going to do it. I'm going to be on the road a lot – the next couple of days in St. Louis, Cleveland, all over the place – so we're trying to practice in the morning and get through finals. There will be some long days for us, but hopefully for the players, they can get a little rest.
When you look at these five, six games we just played, five of them on the road, the overview would be that it was successful. We learned at Louisville that we used later on. I think we learned things at Florida. We did a terrible job going against their press, which is normally not a problem for us. And yet we made some simple mistakes that I think we're going to be able to adjust. We've been to some difficult places to play. It was Fourth of July and Christmas down there (Florida). We'll put shirts and stuff on the students here, but they had everything for everybody. I think it was one of their bigger games in recent history so we've had to play in front of some rough crowds.
All of these things are going to benefit us; it's going to be how we handle this two-week period, with two games, not to have any let-down and to make sure that we're getting better because we haven't had this luxury either. We've normally had it where, Christmas, six, seven years ago, we'd have a long stretch and we'd get a lot done. This year, we have a game after Christmas and we start the Big Ten earlier than we used to start them, which was almost the seventh or eighth of January. This is the period of time we've got to get better. We've got to hone in on our offense, we've got to execute better, we can't have the little mental breakdowns we did defensively, you have to handle the press breakers a little better because once we get into the New Year, it will at least be a little more consistent where we're playing a game every three days.
When you have these kind of games on the road like we've had, there's been very little practice time to get better at Michigan State. It's been all about the opponent. I should have listened to a guy named Jim Boylen, not the one with the Bulls, the one with the Cavs, who said Al McGuire often said, scheduling is by far the most important part of the job. He put it over recruiting and everything else. And it was because you need time to prepare, you need time to wind down. If you have a big game, win or lose it, you're going to feel one way or another until the next game, so that next game better not be very tough. God rest his soul, but I must not have listened to him at all, because our schedule is not conducive to those things and now it gets a little better and hopefully we'll take advantage of it.
On what he's most pleased with and concerned with at this point in this season…
You just leave it with a positive, you want me to put the negative in there too.
I think what I've been pleasantly surprised with is we've been a little better defensively after the first couple of games than I thought. I have been really pleased with Nick (Ward), I think in general, he wasn't great the second half; I'm pleased that Cassius (Winston) has made great strides, Josh (Langford) too. Those three guys have made great strides on both ends of the floor. I was surprised that we were shooting the ball so well early and now we haven't shot it as well lately. I was disappointed that we didn't shoot the ball better from the line; I thought we'd be a very good free throw shooting team.
I've been disappointed with myself because I think the schedule hurt us with these practice times that haven't given our guys a true chance to get better as much as they needed to. I think that slowed our progress a little bit down and caught us.
The freshmen have been a slower to come than I was hoping, other than Aaron (Henry), but I haven't given them much of a chance either. That's another thing that the six BCS games, and all those tough games, and lack of practice time has really hurt the progress, so I think we could really help the freshmen this week. And I think we can get better. As we watched the film yesterday, I think the good news for me was, Cassius to me was out of gas. He wasn't bad; he was just a step off on everything. And he could watch the film and say "Gosh, I can't believe this or I did that." Or Nick, I didn't cut. We had a lot of guys that were playing a little both mentally and physically fatigued
On Kenny Goins being a "glue guy" and his performance this year…
Kenny's a guy that his confidence can get rattled, but when he's confident he's made some unbelievable passes. DJ was just saying to me up there, if Nick would post harder all the time and Kenny would have a little more confidence we think we can really take advantage of that. He was shooting the ball real good, and Kenny's a guy that really likes the game. To be great you have to really love and be obsessed with the game. If over Christmas we can turn the love into obsessed he could be a real asset to this year's team.
On addressing turnovers over the break…
I think Santa really left a piece of coal in my sock on that one, the turnover one, you know he really hasn't treated me very good on that one. I'm glad I have somebody I can blame for that now. It's a hard thing to work on other than being so demanding that if you turn it over, a crazy turnover, I'm just pulling you. Then you have confidence issues. Nobody is doing it on purpose, but that first half of the Florida game was a joke. I mean the ball was flying into places, I mean they threw two into the stands, it should have been a lawsuit. I can't explain that except we didn't do a very good job working on the press for a longer period of time because we didn't practice much. I'm hoping the practices will put us in those situations a little bit better, and it's probably an excuse but it's definitely the difference of us being good or great. I've said this for 20 years and I've always used football, the Super Bowl usually comes down to who turns it over the least. And it's not much different in our sport. 10, 12 turnovers is acceptable, in football one might be acceptable, but it does change the game. Last game we had 15, 16, but we had 10 in the first half. That's when we thought we could have really moved that game along. What happens when you get that many turnovers is you don't get that many shot attempts. We're shooting 50 percent as a team. That's where we can really improve. The last few games our 3-point shooting has gone way down, it's because we haven't taken as many of them. We talked today, why is that? We think it's because we got pressed a little bit, but normally we can go over a press and we're getting through that thing. I think it's partly fatigue, we were playing players a lot of minutes and we were wearing down a little bit. So I have a lot of good excuses, but if you have a direct line and you could tell Santa to bring me less turnovers I'd greatly appreciate that.
On the point guard situation and managing minutes for Cassius…
I think it's his coach, I don't think it's on him. I think he gave me everything he could give me until that game. I noticed it right away. I talked to him about it. I think he had trouble noticing it until after the game, but he felt it during the game and wasn't going to use it as an excuse, which I take my hat off to him. I need to do a better job. If it's gotta be Foster, if it's gotta be McQuaid. You can play 37 minutes, and you can play 33 minutes and have eight more minutes of break if I'd do a little better job. They had some big guards and Foster didn't feel as comfortable. So that was more on me than on him. I don't want him taking his foot off the gas, and on of the problems as we've worn down, he's not shooting as good from three. He's my best 3-point shooter. Usually what happens when you aren't shooting as weel from three, your legs go. It's more in conditioning. There's nothing wrong with his shot, I just need to get him some little breaks. It doesn't mean he's going to play 25 minutes, but those just need to be utilized better. You can't be afraid of it, and that's all going to fall on me to be honest.
On Kyle Ahrens and his play down the stretch against Florida…
He has the highest vertical on our team. We don't always expect that out of him, but he really does. The poor kid since his junior year of high school has had a broken leg, broken foot, broken this, broken that. He's probably the toughest kid, him and X, that I got. If we can keep Kyle healthy, the kid deserves to be healthy and he's tough. He's just getting his rhythm and his confidence back. I thought he played poorly against Iowa and after a good game at Louisville I thought his next two games were very average. We forget he's just trying to feel his way. Whether he starts and I bring McQuaid in, he's going to play a lot. He brings toughness, athleticism and he can shoot the ball. He can drive the ball and he can dunk the ball. That dunk was a big-time play because there was only like a half second left on the shot clock. He saved our bacon a little bit, but that's what a fourth-year junior should be doing. I just pray to God he stays healthy because if there's one kid who deserves to stay healthy it's him.
On first half turnovers…
I think one of them, fatigue, not in the Kansas game, but later on, we've played a lot of games in a short period of time. It's been a lot of big games. We haven't had a lot of room to relax and we've played some of those guys a lot of minutes. The other thing is, guys are just learning to play in their new roles. Everybody has to learn how to play in their role. All of those are good excuses. Do I think a lack of concentration, or a lack of understanding how important it is, I'd throw that at them a little bit. I've thrown it at them myself. It seems like we're going for plays that are triples instead of going for singles. We're going for home runs, we're going for doubles. If we just stay with the singles, against Iowa we have 28 out of 31 assists. We need to get back to moving the ball a little better. Teams are defending us a little bit differently; we're getting into some better teams. We're running into some things we haven't gone against much, the press was one of them. We need to get better at it. That's something to me I should take full responsibility for. It needs to be stressed more and we need to work on it. 10 and 11 in a half is not what great teams do. In my keys to the game, one was we needed to be physically tough because we thought Florida showed great toughness against West Virginia. But we also have to be mentally tough because that's what this kind of stretch does to you. I think mentally I'm not sure we're as gritty as we need to be and that's something we can take out of these six games and try to get better at.
On exam week being tough for the freshmen…
It can be brutal. I think once in a while a freshman has an exam last week, it just kinda depends on a person's schedule. Some of them will have three or four of them on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. There's nothing worse than that. It's part of the things you go through. I think the other side of that is they will get more time to study number one, but number two to work on their game. We're not on the road, they're going to be at home in their own beds. So, there's going to be some pluses with this week. I think it's been a good rule that there's no games allowed this week. I mean all of you here went through a time when you took finals for the first time. It's a tough issue, we have a game Sunday instead of Saturday. We played Oakland a lot on Saturday, they were really good and we had to drive down on a Friday night right after finals. So, this year we moved it to Sunday to give us an extra day after Finals. Although our toughest days of finals are Tuesday and Thursday, we still have some on Friday.
On possibly keeping Kyle as a starter and having McQuaid come off the bench…
I hadn't really thought about it because I didn't know when I was getting McQuaid back. The good news is Kyle and Matt are roommates and they get along like good roommates, not bad ones. We'll look at what's best for both of them to be honest, but haven't given it much thought yet. This week we'll have to make some decisions. It won't be a quarterback controversy because they'll both probably play similar minutes. Something that McQuaid gives to us is he is probably our glue guy. Kyle might be more instant offense than even Matt, because Matt kinda brings everyone together. He's another ball-handler in there and I guess if I thought about it I'd be leaning towards probably still him. I'll talk to both of them. We can talk about it. We can figure it out. I can figure it out with my staff and I don't think it'll be a decision that will rock anybody either way. The encouraging part is I think we'll get Matt back, although he's not 100 percent with his conditioning.
Players Mentioned
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