State College, Pa. — After losing its second road game to a lowly Big Ten opponent, the MSU men’s basketball team wasn’t focused on the big picture.
While the Spartans went into Saturday night’s 85-76 loss to Penn State with a chance to stay tied for first place in the Big Ten, the defeat left the MSU players and head coach Tom Izzo without much to say on the topic.
“I don’t know, nor do I care,” Izzo said of the conference race.
The Spartans’ loss is the second of the conference season, with the first coming at Iowa on Jan. 12. Both Iowa and Penn State have losing records in the conference.
“It’s tough,” senior guard Drew Neitzel said. “There’s no saying (how it will affect the outcome), but it definitely doesn’t help us any. We still have a lot of tough games ahead of us and kind of shot ourselves in the foot once, and we did it again. But you’ve just got to learn from it and move on because there’s nothing we can really do about it now.”
Going into the game, Penn State was eighth in the conference and is now 3-6 in the Big Ten.
“You learn that you can’t disrespect anybody, especially on the road,” junior center Goran Suton said. “You’ve got come ready to play every night.”
The race is on
While the Big Ten has a reputation for being a hard-nosed, physical league and the Spartans have been known to be one of the toughest teams in the country, those aspects of the game did not favor MSU on Saturday night.
The Spartans had a season-high 31 team fouls and had two of their leading scorers — Suton and sophomore forward Raymar Morgan — foul out of the game.
Junior guard Travis Walton and junior forward Marquise Gray also had their game cut short with five fouls. Penn State’s 51 free throws also were a season high. Before Saturday’s loss, UCLA shot the most free throws against the Spartans — 32.
“I didn’t think it was very well officiated,” Izzo said. “But usually teams that play the hardest get some calls. There were some things I didn’t like, but it’s hard to complain about everything because that team of ours was not ready to play from the opening seconds.”
The Nittany Lions made MSU pay for the fouls, connecting on 34 of the free throws — also a season high for an MSU opponent.
Morgan, who thrives on his ability to take defenders to the basket and draw contact, was limited for much of the game and finished with 11 points and six rebounds. He fouled out with 1:57 remaining.
“The fouls got to me a little bit, but the whole team was in foul trouble,” he said. “Tonight just wasn’t our night.”
Short-handed Lions
Penn State’s victory might have come as less of a surprise if they had the services of guard Geary Claxton. Out for the season with a torn ACL, Claxton would have likely been an All-Big Ten selection.
He went down averaging 18.7 points and 8.9 rebounds per game, far more than his healthy teammates.
“When you’re building a program and you don’t have the depth and things programs already built have, one player can make such a difference,” Izzo said.
Penn State players and coach Ed DeChellis reached out to Claxton after the game, and DeChellis said Izzo has been supportive of the Penn State coach’s endeavors all season.
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“He just said, ‘You have something happen to you and you keep trying to fight,’” DeChellis said of his postgame exchange with Izzo.
“He’s a great friend and a very classy individual. When Geary got hurt, (Izzo) was one of the first guys who called very early the next morning.
“I think Tom’s a guy that really understands the whole picture, and was very happy for us and knew we needed this one desperately to keep the kids focused, and he was very complimentary of the way our kids played.”
