Michigan State coach bemoans turnovers, poor free throw shooting in loss to KU Jayhawks
It turns out Kansas’ deep, guard-oriented men’s basketball team didn’t need returning sophomore starter Jalen Wilson to defeat Michigan State in the Champions Classic.
“My big worry,” MSU coach Tom Izzo said after the unranked Spartans’ 87-74 season-opening loss to KU on Tuesday night at New York’s Madison Square Garden, “was with ‘what’s his name’ out they would go with smaller — with more guards — and kind of our strength is in our bigs as far as numbers and there’s is in their guards. And their guards did a number on ours.”
The 6-foot-8, 220-pound Wilson — Izzo seemingly forgot the forward’s name during his postgame news conference — sat out his first game of a three-game suspension following his recent DUI arrest.
KU did indeed receive good guard play in Wilson’s absence — to Izzo’s chagrin.
“I thought Harris played pretty well for them,” Izzo said of KU sophomore point guard Dajuan Harris. “He just kind of ran their team. I don’t even know how many he scored — 3-for-7, three rebounds, four assists, no turnovers.”
As Izzo noted, Harris scored six points on 3-of-7 shooting with four assists against no turnovers. He also had three steals in 35 minutes.
Meanwhile, former Northeastern point guard standout Tyson Walker, the defensive player of the year in the Southland Conference a year ago, scored two points on 1-of-3 shooting with three assists and three turnovers in 20 minutes.
Michigan State committed 16 turnovers to KU’s nine.
“I think that’s kind of what happened with Tyson for us,” Izzo said of it sometimes taking time for a transfer to adapt to a new system. “And for him (KU coach Bill Self) although Remy Martin kind of was an All-American, so it’s a little different there,” Izzo said.
Martin, a transfer from Arizona State, scored 15 points for the Jayhawks, all in the second half.
“Tyson has been playing awfully well. But it wasn’t that he played poorly, poorly, it’s just, the guy averaged like 17 points a game (last year) and he came off a couple of those ball screens wide open and just didn’t shoot it, and I don’t know why. He’s a very good shooter,” Izzo said of Walker.
Walker did not attempt a three. MSU hit 7 of 20 threes to KU’s 6 of 17.
“So we’ll have to shore that up a little bit,” Izzo said. “I think we kind of wore down a little bit. We were in a little bit of foul trouble the first half and I think we played Christie (Max, nine points, 3-of-10 shooting, 31 minutes), wore him down, and then I get a T (in second half) and that was probably a turning point too, which, a little bit, but I thought it was identical to a play earlier. That’s the way it goes.”
Izzo was upset at his team’s work from the free throw line. Michigan State hit 9 of 16 free throws to KU’s 19 of 24.
“Give them credit. Ochai (Agbaji, career-high 29 points) was really good. I thought he played really well. But the game’s won and lost on a simple thing like we can’t make a free throw and the turnovers,” Izzo said.
“And I said the turnovers would be a big key in the game. It was a big key. Free throw shooting, I don’t know, me and my staff should take a lot of abuse for that because that’s something you should be able to control a little more than we controlled the way we shot it.
“So you get 10 points on the free-throw line and eight more turnovers you’re probably not going to beat a good team. I thought their guards played very well. Ochai played really well,” Izzo added.
Michigan State did outrebound KU 37-30. KU senior David McCormack had two boards to go with his 10 points in 22 minutes.
“The kid’s a load down there,” Izzo said of the 6-10 McCormack, who hit 4 of 11 shots and was 2-of-5 from the line.
“I wish Marcus (Bingham, 10 points, seven boards, 18 minutes) would learn something from him. You don’t have to be a three-point shooter (7-footer Bingham was 0-for-3 from three and 5-of-10 shooting overall),” Izzo said.
“I thought when Marcus posted he did a hell of a job. I thought defensively Marcus did a great job. Because we weren’t going to double down because of the three-point shooters. I have no problem with the defense. I feel very good at the job Marcus did there. Just convincing him that he’s got to put his butt down there like McCormack puts his.
“And I thought the other thing that I was disappointed in, I mean, we out rebounded them pretty well, but they got a lot of loose balls, the 50/50 balls. I thought they got a lot of them. And I think some of it, sometimes we were playing with three bigs because we had guys in foul trouble and not the team to do that against, especially the way they’re playing right now.”
This story was originally published November 10, 2021 at 8:50 AM with the headline "Michigan State coach bemoans turnovers, poor free throw shooting in loss to KU Jayhawks."
