Junior forward Raymar Morgan fights for possession during the game against Northern Michigan at Breslin Center Nov. 5. The Spartans won the game 118-57.
You’ll have to excuse MSU head coach Tom Izzo for not knowing much about the Idaho men’s basketball team. After all, the team features 12 new players, a new head coach and has played only one exhibition game.
In fact, the Vandals’ roster is so obscure, it returns only five players and one starter from a team that finished 8-21 last season. Ten of Idaho’s newcomers are transfers — six of whom are from junior colleges.
“We’ve seen one exhibition game on them … but I do not know nearly as much as I’d like to know,” Izzo said.
Izzo said he learned from Idaho’s game against Utah State that the Vandals like to play man-to-man defense, run a lot of plays off sets and have athletes who are dangerous on the fast break. However, he admitted he’s unsure how to guard against their individual players.
“Personnel is the question mark,” Izzo said. “It’s a little scary when you go into a game when you’re playing somebody first of all completely out of your area, but second of all with all these new people.”
Picking a rotation
With just three days separating the offseason and regular season, Izzo still hasn’t settled on a starting lineup. He said fans can be “rest assured” that sophomore guard Kalin Lucas, junior forward Raymar Morgan and senior center Goran Suton will start, but he’s not sure which positions they will occupy.
Izzo said he will sort that out and select his other starters in the next couple of days.
“We can go in a couple different directions,” Izzo said of filling the two vacancies in his starting lineup. “We can go smaller and put (Morgan) at the four or go bigger and put (senior forward Marquise Gray) at the four.
“Then (we have) the decision on a guy like Durrell Summers, Chris Allen or Travis Walton — who do we want coming off the bench? Do we want to come with defensive intensity and set a tempo right away, or do we want a better scorer coming off the bench?”
Suton status
Izzo said the leg injury Suton endured during practice a couple of weeks ago is still bothering him. Suton saw limited action in both exhibition games, averaging 4.5 points and 4.5 rebounds in 15 minutes of action.
Izzo said Suton’s health has improved significantly the past few days but acknowledged it could take a couple more weeks before Suton, the Big Ten’s leading returning rebounder, is back to full strength. Izzo will err on the side of caution with Suton, who will need to be fully healthy by Nov. 27, when MSU travels to Orlando, Fla., to take on schools such as No. 10 Gonzaga and Maryland in the Old Spice Classic.
“(Suton’s injury) does concern me because he had been playing so good and he’s not been real sharp,” Izzo said. “I didn’t play him as much in the last game on purpose and the exhibition game before that it was so up and down that I’m not sure he ever got into it.”
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