Team comes home empty
Maybe Alaska was the wrong place to heat up the MSU men's basketball season. The No. 9 Spartans (2-2) sparked the Great Alaska Shootout tournament with a 80-60 Thanksgiving Day defeat of Montana, but fell in subsequent games to unranked opponents Villanova, 81-73, and Oklahoma State, 64-61. Following Saturday's early exit from Anchorage, Ala., at the hands of the Cowboys, basketball head coach Tom Izzo labeled the weekend as an exercise in poor play from MSU guards and lagging defense. "We don't have very good guard play right now," Izzo said, "and we're not very good defensively.