Freshman forward Delvon Roe fights for possession against North Carolina forward Deon Thompson Wednesday at Ford Field in Detroit.
MSU men’s basketball head coach Tom Izzo has repeatedly said he will play any team anywhere at anytime.
But after an NBA-like four-games-in-seven-days stretch against teams that all have legitimate shots making the NCAA Tournament, Izzo admitted he was the one to blame following Wednesday night’s 98-63 loss to No. 1 North Carolina at Ford Field.
Izzo didn’t deflect total credit from 8-0 North Carolina — which has won its games by an average of 30 points — but admitted that he knew 45 minutes into Monday’s practice that the Spartans (4-2) would be in for a world of hurt against the Tar Heels.
“The second part of it is not credit to North Carolina, but blame to me on the scheduling,” Izzo said. “I know it will sound like it’s an excuse, but we were just dead. We had no legs.”
North Carolina head coach Roy Williams, who took the podium for the postgame press conference before Izzo, agreed with Izzo that the Spartans “seemed to lose their legs a little bit.”
Despite holding MSU to 35 percent shooting from the field — including 20 percent in the second half — Williams said that was in “no way” because of his team’s defense.
Sophomore guards Kalin Lucas and Chris Allen and senior forward Marquise Gray all agreed that fatigue played a key role in the game’s outcome, especially in the second half.
“With this many games back-to-back-to-back in this stretch, we hung in there in the first half but in the second half we ran out of gas; we couldn’t hit shots and that was evident,” said Gray, who was held scoreless while battling foul trouble. “We had good shots and wide-open looks, but kept missing and missing layups.”
The Spartans made only seven shots and scored just 24 points in the second half, allowing the Tar Heels to go up by 30 points with 7:54 remaining in the game.
After a 35-point throttling on national TV, the question for the Spartans now is simple: Following two disappointing losses and the loss of senior center Goran Suton for two-to-four weeks following arthroscopic surgery on his left knee, where does MSU go from here?
“We go up, we’re Michigan State, we’re not going to drop our head one bit and I’m the captain of this team and nobody will drop their heads,” senior guard Travis Walton said. “We’re going to regroup, we’re going to get better — everybody’s against us right now — but we’re going to get better, we’re going to work hard and you will see a different team.
“By the end of Christmas we will be a different team. Guaranteed.”
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