The Spartans had them beat. Right until they didn’t.
Leading No. 6 Wisconsin by 11 points with 7:45 left to play, MSU was right around the corner from winning their second consecutive Big Ten championship and third in four years. But the Badgers were resilient, using a 14-2 run to take the lead less than four minutes later.
MSU and Wisconsin traded blows until the final minute when the Spartans made two puzzling and costly turnovers that cost them the opportunity to close out the win.
Wash, rinse, repeat. Perhaps a silver lining can be found considering MSU made it to the final round and went toe-to-toe with one of the best teams in the country for 40 minutes. But Tom Izzo doesn’t want to hear it. The Spartans have lost numerous key games this season, and the latest loss could be the most crushing the team has experienced yet.
“I’m just not good at these semi-moral victories or moral seasons or whatever,” Izzo said. “It’s not what we are. And it ticks me off that if they’re thinking that way, I mean, what excites me is everyone knows we’re not as good a team as we could’ve been to the guys that we lost.”
Down 11 with under four seconds left, Izzo called timeout. Not to draw a play, but so that his team could soak in the moment and listen to the cheers of the opposing fans who were minutes away from watching Wisconsin’s Big Ten championship celebration.
To win a championship, Izzo said, you have to do 90 percent of the things right. MSU fell short of that mark on Sunday, but the goal is for MSU to learn from its mistakes with an NCAA tournament first round match against No. 10 Georgia approaching on Friday.
“Yet this team did like a couple of our teams did. They didn’t crumble,” Izzo said of Wisconsin. “They fell down, but they got back up. To play like we did the last 10, 12 games, to beat some of the teams we beat on the road, probably be some of my proudest times when I’m done. But it sure as hell ain’t gonna be that way right now, because I am not feeling as good about it right now.”
