NEW YORK — To hear Tom Izzo, it was as if Michigan State basketball hadn’t just won its 12th straight game.
“A little more entitled.” “A little selfish.” “Reading our own press clippings.” All criticisms Izzo delivered Saturday afternoon, all buzzwords inside his program.
All said to make a point. And not one that has anything to do with the eighth-ranked Spartans wearing down Rutgers with their deep bench in the second half and then surviving their own late-game gaffes to preserve Saturday’s 81-74 victory at Madison Square Garden.
But more to prepare his players for what’s to come.
“I’m just happy we won,” Izzo said. “I’m not excited for how we played. … We have to improve now, because it’s gonna get harder. I mean, we’re going to get everybody’s best shot.”
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Call it preventative maintenance, if you will.
“We’re pretty good,” he added, “we’re not great.”
Because, pretty or ugly, every win counts toward a Big Ten title and more. And, to borrow another long-used Izzo phrase, he does not want the Spartans to get “fat and sassy.”
“I mean, it feels great to win 12 in a row and go 8-0 in the Big Ten right now. It feels amazing,” said freshman Jase Richardson, who scored a season-high 20 points Saturday. “But we still got a lot of season left, and we’re still trying to win that title. So we’ve gotta worry about the other games that are coming up.”
MSU (17-2, 8-0) is off to its best conference start and longest winning streak since the 2018-19 season, when the Spartans won 13 in a row overall and opened league play with nine straight victories. Izzo’s longest Big Ten streak in his first 29 seasons came during his 2000 national championship run, when they won 15 straight after losing that season’s conference opener on the road at Wisconsin.
The victory over Rutgers (13-5, 5-3) also improved MSU’s league road record to 4-0. Only the 6-0 away start during 2008-09 and a 5-0 road start in 2018-19 were better — both of those seasons featured Final Four berths and regular-season Big Ten titles. The 2000 team holds the Spartans’ longest Izzo-era Big Ten road streak, at seven in a row to close the regular season
“We’re showing resilience. And I feel that’s a big thing, resilience, keeping our composure,” said sophomore swingman Coen Carr, who had 14 points and eight rebounds in 26-plus minutes. “We know they’re at home, they’re gonna have their runs because it’s a game of runs. So we just have to weather their runs, weather the storm, and just stay doing what we do and doing the things that got us here.”
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None of the players, however, know what happens when roles change from hunters to the hunted. No player remains from MSU’s last Big Ten title team, only Izzo.
The 30th-year head coach now has 351 conference victories, needing three more to surpass Indiana legend Bob Knight’s record of 353 Big Ten wins. If the Spartans beat Minnesota on Wednesday, Izzo could tie Knight with a victory next Saturday at USC and potentially could break the record Feb. 4 at UCLA. One more regular-season conference championship would tie Izzo with both Knight and former Purdue coach Ward “Piggy” Lambert, each of whom have 11.
Izzo, however, remains fixated simply on getting his team to reach its ceiling and full potential. Especially with a gauntlet in the final six weeks about to kick into gear.
MSU hosts suddenly surging Minnesota on Wednesday (8 p.m., Peacock). The Golden Gophers started conference play 0-6 but have won three straight. Their 77-69 home win over No. 15 Oregon on Saturday was their second in a row against a ranked opponent, and Minnesota also won on the road Tuesday at Iowa.
The Spartans won the first meeting Dec. 4 at Minnesota, 90-72.
“We gotta come to practice every day ready to work,” said junior guard Tre Holloman, who had nine points and six assists Saturday. “And then we go from there.”
MSU’s backloaded schedule ramps up with the long road trip to Los Angeles, followed by visits from the Ducks on Feb. 8 and struggling Indiana on Feb. 11. A demanding return trip to Illinois on Feb. 15 also looms, beginning a grueling seven-game stretch to close the regular season that includes road games at No. 20 Michigan, Maryland and Iowa and home games against No. 12 Purdue, No. 19 Wisconsin and, finally, the Wolverines on March 9 in the regular-season finale.
Which is why Izzo looked at Saturday’s win over the Scarlet Knights through such a critical lens.
Committing 10 turnovers in the second half, five of them in the final 6:11 to squander most of a 13-point lead, bothered him. So did the Spartans’ first-half issues with rebounding and both transition and halfcourt offense.
Defensively, Carr, Holloman and Jaden Akins limited Rutgers star freshman Ace Bailey for much of the game — he was 2-for-15 before making his final two shots to finish with 18 points and help his team pull within six in the final minute. But what concerned Izzo more was allowing banged-up backup Jordan Derkack to hit four 3-pointers and go 7-for-11 to score 26 points and keep pulling MSU from pulling away.
“Learning how to deal with failure is hard. Learning how to deal with success is sometimes harder,” Izzo said. “We found a way the second half to get better. … I didn’t feel we had the same grit. And sometimes that happens when you start winning and everybody starts telling you how good you are.
“So thank God I won’t tell them that.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State basketball: Tom Izzo sees target grow with win streak
