Freshman forward Miles Bridges scored 11 points and led the team with nine rebounds, but was ejected after his fifth foul. Forward Nick Ward also had 11 points, and guards Cassius Winston and Josh Langford combined for 11 points in a game where MSU was exposed by foul trouble — freshmen committing 10 of the team’s 20.

Izzo’s freshmen responded to his criticisms on Saturday. They played a critical role in  MSU’s 80-76 victory over Oral Roberts University. It was MSU’s first game without Bridges, the Spartans’ leading scorer, who injured his ankle against Duke and could be out for a “couple of weeks,” Izzo said.

“We ran out of bodies today with fatigue and the size that they have so we have to get some guys better and we will,” Izzo said. “If you look at it, we made some progress, even today with the negative.”

Ward, Winston, and Langford combined for 48 points — each of them setting career highs in scoring. Ward finished with a game-high 24 points and team-best 10 rebounds for his first double-double. Winston was MSU’s best passer with nine assists and the team’s second-best scorer with 15. Langford shot 75 percent from beyond the arc and finished the game with nine points.

Despite the freshmen’s success, Izzo said he was not pleased with his team’s performance.

“It might be because they’re still tired, but if they are, so be it,” Izzo said. “Sooner or later you have to look in the mirror, it gets personal. You’re one on one with a guy late in the game you can’t give up a layup. It gets personal.”

Winston said he agreed with Izzo about the team’s performance and said there are still improvements that need to be made going forward.

“We've got a lot of things to improve, we've got a lot of things to do as a team,” Winston said. “It's really coming from us, it’s not our shots it's not our excuses, it’s just how we play the game. We’ve got to come to the game with a little more toughness and a little more spirit and things like that intensity. Once we do that we will be a good team. “

Izzo said Ward has made significant improvement since the beginning of the season — Ward entered training camp this season weighing just more than 280 pounds, but has lost about 30 pounds to date. Ward played a career-high 26 minutes against Oral Roberts, but Izzo said lacked playmaking abilities on the defensive side of the ball late in the game.

“We tried to experiment and see if we could play Nick (Ward) more minutes, and that didn’t really go as well as you would think,” Izzo said. “He played one end of the court with a lot of passion, a lot of emotion, and didn’t play the other end of the court very well. As soon as he got tired, that was a problem.”

Izzo said Ward has been working on improving his stamina. His previous career-high in minutes played was against Wichita State University, when the 6-foot-8 makeshift center played 22 minutes.

“Well his conditioning is so poor,” Izzo said. “It is getting better though. He’s lost 30 pounds, as we know, and he’s had to adjust to that. … When he gets tired, he melts down. That’s the reason we’re only playing him 16 or 17 minutes again.”

Ward agreed with Izzo and said there was room for improvement.

“I played OK,” Ward said. “Defensively I played great first half, then got fatigued in the second half so it got a little more shaky.”

A lack of presence in the paint was once again an issue for the Spartans. The Golden Eagles scored 26 points in the paint and outscored MSU 17-10 on second chance points. Foul trouble obstructed Oral Roberts from an upset victory, and MSU went 25-for-34 from the free throw line, the most converted and attempted this season.

“We made a lot of progress from Arizona to today and we will keep making progress,” Izzo said. “We will be better on Tuesday if you ask me.”