Head Coach Tom Izzo gives his players on the floor a talk during the first half. The Spartans lost to the Fighting Illini in the final seconds, 56-55, at State Farm Center on Jan. 25, 2022.
After freshman Max Christie threw the ball past sophomore guard A.J. Hoggard out of bounds for his third turnover of the first half, the freshman guard slumped his head in disappointment as the raucous Illinois crowd reminded the 18-year-old freshman that he was having one of the worst games of his young career.
“Max, You Suck! Max, You Suck! Max, You Suck!” the crowd chanted.
Christie, an Illinois native, was reminded every time he touched the ball that the fans from his home state still resented his decision to spurn the local school and go to MSU. The crowd started with boos every time Christie touched the ball before moving to a more direct verbal assault.
“Max, You Suck! Max, You Suck! Max, You Suck!”
With the building breathing down his back the entire night, Christie turned in one of his weakest performances of the season. The freshman from Arlington Heights, Illinois scored a career-low two points on 12.5% shooting from the field (1-8) and missed all three of his three-point attempts.
“It was just an off night,” senior forward Gabe Brown said of Christie. “He works on his craft every single day, he comes in ready to go every single day. He does all the right things, it was just off night for him. I think it's one of his first off nights.”
Christie, who is normally the bedrock of consistency for MSU, struggled to even hold onto the ball tonight. He turned the ball over three times in the first half, including the errant pass that prompted Illinois fans to antagonize the struggling freshman.
“Max, You Suck! Max, You Suck! Max, You Suck!”
The missed shots and turnovers were a part of an uncharacteristic night, Michigan State Head Coach Tom Izzo said. He said he thinks Christie was impacted by the Orange Krush, Illinois’ student section, who booed and chanted at Christie every time the ball touched his hands.
“Max learned a little lesson tonight,” Izzo said. “They were getting on him probably because he's an Illinois kid. He'll learn that's the way it is in this league. The crowd was great.”
After playing close to flawlessly in MSU’s first four road games of the year, Christie finally showed his freshman inexperience in a hostile Big Ten road environment as the Illinois faithful breathed down his neck all night.
“I could tell by the look on his face, it's what freshmen go through,” Izzo said. “He's actually been very consistent the last couple of weeks, but I just had a feeling in the huddles, I just could see him.”
Without Christie to help carry the burden offensively, Michigan State scored a season-low 55 points and only put up a season-low 20 points in the opening half. Christie’s struggles mirrored the team’s, scoring 0 points on four shots in the first half before making his only shot in the first 90 seconds of the second half.
The crawl out of the gates proved too much to overcome. Illinois jumped out to a 34-20 halftime lead on the back of senior guard Trent Frazier, who finished with a game-high 15 points and six assists. The Illini, who were without preseason All-Americans junior Kofi Cockburn and sophomore André Curbelo, capitalized on the Spartans' turnovers and missed shots and built a 14-point lead that proved to be insurmountable.
Michigan State began to mount a slow and steady comeback in the second half. It started with Christie, who hit a midrange jumper for MSU's first field goal of the half to cut the lead to 36-24 with 18:44 left. The comeback continued until the final whistle up to junior forward Malik Hall splitting a pair of free throws when Michigan State was down two to lose 56-55.
Throughout Michigan State's struggle to close the gap, Christie, the team's second-leading scorer, only attempted two more shots, missing both of them. He came into tonight with a 49.7% effective field goal percentage but could not provide his normal impact on offense when the team was desperately in search of an answer to Illinois' stifling defense.
He was still pulling down crucial rebounds and playing good defense down the stretch as he has all season, but his normal presence on offense was sorely missing. Normally, Christie does it all, but tonight the shots just didn't fall. The 12.5% ties Christie's lowest field goal percentage to date, which he shot in MSU's last loss to Northwestern on Jan 15.
“Max is one of our best players, if not the best player, and he just didn't look like he was the same tonight,” Izzo said. “He still got six rebounds, did some things, but it's uncharacteristic to shoot like that.”
Christie’s struggles against Illinois were an outlier to his otherwise outstanding freshman campaign that has earned him five Big Ten freshman of the week honors so far. It is evident that Christie needs to perform well for Michigan State to come close to realizing its offensive potential and the team will need him to have a short memory and shake off tonight’s performance.
But how exactly will Christie begin the work to put the Illinois game in the rearview mirror? Izzo said it’ll be an extra film session and a 6:30 trip to the gym to shoot tomorrow morning.
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“What do I think Max Christie will do from here?” Izzo said. “He'll watch the tape on the way home on the plane. He'll probably get up at 6:30 and be in there shooting. He's just an unbelievable kid. His work ethic, his intelligence — he picks things up like that. It was a good lesson, you'd hope to learn that lesson with a win but we didn't deserve to win.”
