LOS ANGELES — Somewhere in the City of Angels, more than 50 years ago, John Lennon took up a brief residency and forgot who he was for a while.
Call Michigan State basketball’s first Big Ten Los Angeles sojourn its own Lost Weekend. Tom Izzo just hopes the Spartans can get back to where they once belonged.
Their 13-game win streak came crashing to a halt at USC. They lost back-to-back games for the first time this season.
Their offense went from seamless and smooth to wonky and wretched. A previously breakneck fast-break looked broken.
And Tuesday night’s 63-61 loss at UCLA knocked them out of sitting alone atop the Big Ten standings after opening conference play with nine straight wins.
“We just gotta continue to stay aggressive and not let this just deter us into the next game. … And also, we can’t just play scared now,” junior center Carson Cooper said outside the locker room at Pauley Pavillion before a redeye flight home. “If things haven’t gone right, we can’t just fall back when adversity hits. We hit adversity twice in a couple of days, so now we really have to self-evaluate and look at ourselves and see what we can do.”
No. 9 MSU (18-4, 9-2 Big Ten) likely will end its three-week run in the top 10 of the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll when the new rankings come out Monday. Before then, the Spartans will host Oregon on Saturday (noon, Fox) as the second-place team in the league race for the first time.
No. 7 Purdue, which won at Iowa earlier Tuesday, overtook first place by a half-game. With the loss to UCLA, MSU held just a half-game lead on No. 22 Michigan, which hosted the Ducks on Wednesday.
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After a seemingly infallible two-month stretch in which they mostly played high-level, precision basketball, the Spartans’ warts got exposed between the loss to UCLA and Saturday’s 70-64 loss at USC.
“We probably looked a little bit dysfunctional,” said MSU coach Tom Izzo, whose quest to pass Bob Knight as the Big Ten’s winningest coach in league play remains stuck one back at 352 victories.
Izzo lamented his lineup choices after both losses and pointed to the job his opposing coaches did defensively scheming against MSU. He cited USC’s bigger guards and undersized, quick post players after the first loss. On Tuesday, he pointed to UCLA’s post presence with 7-foot-3 Aday Mara and three others at 6-8 or 6-9 as presenting a challenge when MSU attempted to feed Jaxon Kohler, Szymon Zapala and Carson Cooper in the post.
It also didn’t help that the Spartans’ 3-point shooting misery deepened. They went 10-for-37 in the two games from behind the arc, dropping their season average to 28.7%, which ranks 346th out of 355 Division I teams.
“I think some of that was (the Bruins) are a pretty good defensive team,” Izzo said Tuesday. “And with their size, a lot of that game, it was hard to go inside, which we’ve been doing more of. And when our shooters weren’t shooting, I probably created some issues. …
“I just think we take some bad shots at times. And these step-back 3s that some of our veterans are taking, I’m going to send those to a different planet.”
Beyond the shooting problems and Izzo’s admitted inability to find the right combinations in L.A., three other glaring concerns were apparent.
In both games, MSU fell behind by double digits — 11 points early in the second half against the Bruins (17-6, 8-4) and 15 in the first half against the Trojans. During their win streak, the Spartans trailed by 10 only once, in a comeback win against Illinois, and once by seven in beating Rutgers in New York. Both of those deficits were early in the first half.
“Whether it was turnovers or bad shots, our guys battled,” junior Jaxon Kohler said Tuesday. “They battled really hard for this game, and it’s really unfortunate the way it ended. … How you respond and what you do after that is what defines character.”
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After committing 13 turnovers that led to 12 points for the Trojans on Saturday, the Spartans coughed the ball up 16 times for 19 Bruins points on Tuesday. They are averaging 12.2 per game, up from an Izzo-era low 10.0 last season.
Many of the giveaways against UCLA — wildly off-target passes that sailed out of bounds, fumbled handoffs, mistimed lobs, dribble-drives into defenders — left Izzo miffed. So did the the Spartans’ shot-clock violations and lack of awareness and execution when it was running down.
“It was a physical game both ways, and I’m not sure we handled that from a guard position as well,” Izzo said. “And some of the turnovers were just — I mean, we should have gave helmets to some of the people in the first row, because the ball was just kind of flying over there, and it’s BS.”
Limiting turnovers has been a backbeat for Izzo all winter, even as his team ran through the troubles in transition. But the Spartans got held to single-digit fast-break points Tuesday for the second straight game and fifth time in their last 10. MSU left home averaging 18.5 points a game in transition and failed to reach that in the two losses combined, with nine in each, as the Trojans and Bruins took varied approaches looking for those results defensively to slow down Izzo’s scoring juggernaut.
“I think all of it was on ourselves,” said Cooper, one of five players to commit three turnovers in one of the two games. “I mean, we’re turning the ball over in ways that we haven’t all year, just stupid things. And we’re all guilty of it. Throwing the ball out of bounds and just miscues and all that.”
Still, MSU lost both games by eight combined points, even though Izzo said he wasn’t sure his team deserved to win Tuesday with its mid-game offensive ineptitude. He liked the fight the Spartans showed in storming back in the second half. He appreciated seeing the free-throw shooting return to a high level after Saturday’s uncharacteristic struggles at the line.
“(The Bruins) were physical,” Cooper said. “But we have to do our job and be physical, too. … It was a very physical game. It was a good game to have to prepare us for what’s to come.”
But no one left California pleased with their performance, individually or as a collective. And the schedule continues to increase in degree of difficulty from now until the end of the regular season. There are no more gimmes or opportunities to win without playing well.
To borrow another line from Lennon, the Spartans have to believe it’s getting better, too. Or as senior Jaden Akins said, “We just gotta learn from this and continue to get better” without dwelling on the losses.
If there is a sliver of hope, it comes from the last time MSU started 18-2 and 9-0 in the league, five years ago. The Cassius Winston/Xavier Tillman-led team lost their next three games and four of five before recovering to win a share of the Big Ten regular-season title. That team also rebounded to reach Izzo’s most recent Final Four in fab fashion.
“It’s all how we handle adversity,” Kohler said. “And that’s the most important characteristic that we’re all trying to build here at Michigan State — as a staff, coaches and players.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State basketball must put poor L.A. trip in rear view mirror
