Michigan State coach Tom Izzo was hot after Duke handed the Spartans their first loss of the season.
“There were coverages that we just didn’t do, and those are effort-related and intelligence-related, not skill-related,” Izzo said in part. “And that stuff bothers me, so that means I didn’t do a good enough job getting it through.”
A 66-60 loss to a blue blood now ranked third in the country isn’t season-ruining, but Izzo and the ninth-ranked Spartans believe they have plenty to work on before returning to the court Saturday against Penn State in University Park, Pa.
Michigan State (8-1, 1-0 Big Ten) led Duke 45-40 with less than 13 minutes left before the Blue Devils rallied. The Spartans missed eight of their final 10 attempts from the floor, and Coen Carr missed the front end of a 1-and-1 free-throw opportunity when his team was down 55-53 in the closing minutes.
Even though the Spartans held the edge in offensive rebounds and second-chance points, Izzo’s first of many critiques was that his team missed four free-throw boxouts.
But the championship-winning coach did admit the larger picture was reassuring.
“I’m encouraged because we’re 8-1,” Izzo said. “Played a monster schedule. We’ve overcome some average shooting. My point guard (Jeremy Fears Jr.) is getting better and better every day. Coop (Carson Cooper) had a monster game as far as a lot of those things. … I mean, I think we got a chance to be really good. We just, our margin for error, and this is what we’ve said all along, our margin for error is slim.”
Cooper matched his 16 points with a career-high 16 rebounds while playing much of the game against Duke’s likely lottery pick Cameron Boozer. Fears shot 0-for-10 but tied his career high of 13 assists. His average of 9.8 assists per game leads Division I.
Fears believes the Spartans can play with anybody.
“We were in the game with them the whole game,” Fears said. “It came down to a one-, two-possession thing. Some hard calls, a rebound that we missed, a cutout they ended up coming up with, and it comes down to making shots, too. I missed every shot I put up (Saturday). … I’ve got to make some of those shots, and it just changed the game.”
The front line of Cooper, Jaxon Kohler (team-best 14.2 ppg) and Coen Carr (11.1) will be a difficult matchup for Penn State (8-2, 0-1).
The Nittany Lions were steamrolled 113-72 at Indiana to open their Big Ten slate on Tuesday. Lamar Wilkerson did damage with an Indiana program-record 10 3-pointers, but Penn State also couldn’t keep up with Reed Bailey (18 points, 6-for-6 shooting) or Tayton Conerway (17, 7-for-9 shooting).
Like Izzo, Penn State’s Mike Rhoades was a man working through his frustrations.
“We got overwhelmed right from the start,” Rhoades said. “We didn’t understand how hard it was going to be to go on the road in the Big Ten. (The Hoosiers) got beat the last two games, and so they had their backs up against the wall, and we didn’t understand the urgency that they were going to have to play (with), and they absolutely just took us behind the woodshed. And that was embarrassing.”
Penn State has allowed 47.6% field-goal shooting, the worst among Big Ten teams. Michigan State, meanwhile, has the eighth-best scoring defense in the country at 61.0 ppg allowed.
Four players average double-digit scoring for Penn State: Kayden Mingo (15.4), Freddie Dilione V (13.3), Melih Tunca (12.8) and Josh Reed (10.0).
