“I think my assistants deserve some credit for that,” he said. “I mean, we just sat down and said, ‘We’re not gonna do this.’ And I was on them hard, self-admitted. But I told you that we just had to get back to figuring it out – and Nick Ward has done an incredible job up on those ball screens. I thought that was the big difference in the Texas game, that we did not let them get in the lane, we kept them out of the paint for the most part.”

He was asked to look ahead to the opponent Tuesday night, and discuss what he has seen during film study of the 3-2 Cardinals, who lost to Marquette in the NIT Season Tip-Off in Brooklyn over the holiday weekend. 

“I think what I’ve been most impressed with watching film on Louisville is they move the ball about as well as any team that I’ve seen so far,” Izzo said. “That ball is going from side-to-side. And they are taking shots now from NBA-plus 3s, and more than few of them. So that will be a challenge for us because they are still athletic enough to get around you. They have a good enough post player that if you stretch it out too far they are going to be able to dump it in. This is a very, very good team, comparable I think to the teams that were out there. And even though they lost two games, one was to the No. 5 team in the country that they played right to the end. And the other was a good Marquette team that really they should have beat if they had made a tip-in with two seconds left.”

He was asked about balancing the need to get freshmen experience Tuesday with the fear of exposing them to the first hostile road crowd of the season.

“Well, what I like about it is, playing in that Kansas game, even though it wasn’t a true road game – hell, when you were there, since the other three teams all wear blue, it looked like a road game to me,” he said, in reference to the Champions Classic season-opener. “But I think it was a big stage game. And so guys understand what it’s like to be on a big stage. That is a concern. That’s why the first big road game, instead of playing somewhere smaller, play at Louisville, might be the biggest venue we’ll play in all year. Pretty rabid fans, so it’s gonna be part of this growth process we’re working on all year long. Can we get by another hurdle? Can we put another experience in the book? That’s kind of what the pre-season is for, and this will be another big, big stop on the way.”

The Louisville game tips off at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and airs on ESPN. MSU goes to Piscataway, New Jersey to play Rutgers at 6:00 p.m. Friday night, airing on BTN.