MSU men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo talks about his team’s 64-61 overtime win against No. 21 Wisconsin on Tuesday night at Breslin Center. Izzo discusses his team coming together and winning a game he called a “character check.”
If you take a look at Mike Kebler’s stat line from Tuesday’s overtime win against No. 20 Wisconsin, it doesn’t look like the senior guard played much of a role in the MSU men’s basketball team’s win.
The stat line reads zeros across the board in less than one minute played.
But if you watched the final three minutes of regulation and overtime, you know Kebler, like all 11 Spartans who played, had a critical role in the late rally and victory.
“You’ve got to admit that was the best team win. I played (11) guys, and every one of them had a part in it,” head coach Tom Izzo said after the game. “Every one of them hit a big shot, got a rebound, helped in a turnover like (Kebler), and so that makes a difference too.”
Trailing by nine with 2:30 remaining and senior guard Kalin Lucas having four personal fouls, the Spartans were on the edge of a second-consecutive loss and digging themselves a deep hole in the Big Ten.
But the Spartans turned up the pressure and forced turnovers on defense and hit shots on offense to complete the comeback.
“What I like, is a lot of people got stepped on and squashed, and they bounced back … as a team, and kind of as a program, the way the week went,” Izzo said. “That’s what you have to do, you have to bounce back. … As I told our players, this is what life is like. There will be people smacking you all the time. You can do one of two things: get up and smack back or die. Tonight we hung in there.”
Hooked on Leuer
Wisconsin forward Jon Leuer came into Tuesday’s game averaging 19.3 points and 7.3 rebounds per game. But the combined efforts of junior forwards Draymond Green and Delvon Roe held Leuer to 10 points and he turned the ball over three times.
“They always say make somebody else beat you, but we don’t say that. We just say we can’t let him come out here and have a big game,” Green said. “We know we’re not going to say, ‘Make somebody else beat us,’ because we don’t want to lose the game. Whatever we have to do to shut him down, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Last season, Leuer scored 21 points when the teams met in East Lansing, and almost single-handedly beat the Spartans. On Tuesday, the Spartan big men held Leuer to 3-for-9 shooting.
“I’ve been saying over and over, that’s what my role is, that’s what my job is,” Roe said. “If I want to get to that next level … it has to be by guarding the best players, and I think I did that tonight.”
Battling Bo
Izzo has been one of the most successful coaches in NCAA history. MSU is just the fourth school in NCAA histroy to make six Final Fours in 12 years.
But if there has been one man who has had Izzo’s number, it’s Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan. With Tuesday’s win Izzo picked up just his sixth win in 18 games against the head Badger.
Wisconsin appeared to snatch its first win in Breslin Center since 2008 before the Spartans rallied.
If the Spartans want to win their third-straight Big Ten championship, it would help to do what Wisconsin couldn’t: win on the opponent’s floor.
The Spartans haven’t won at the Kohl Center in Madison, Wis., in their last seven trips.
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