It was another frustrating day for Michigan State basketball in Los Angeles on Tuesday night as the Spartans suffered their second straight loss, this time to the UCLA Bruins. After the game, MSU head coach Tom Izzo addressed the media, and recapped a game that he felt his team probably didn’t even deserve to win based on how they played during the middle of it.
You can see what Tom Izzo had to say below:
On the loss
‘Well, I’m not sure we deserved to win the game the way we played in the middle of it. I said after USC we didn’t play as hard as we normally do, we turned the ball over a little too much, and we missed a lot of free throws. Here I thought, against Mick’s team, ’cause he’s a hell of a coach, he does a hell of a job, we competed, we made our free throws, we turned the damn ball over 16 times compared to their three and that was the difference in the game.’
On the long road trip
‘A road trip’s a road trip, it isn’t as easy as I thought it would be, and yet it was great… As far as the practices, but it’s a long time on the road for college guys, I thought we handled it pretty well.’
On UCLA
‘But I mean we got beat by probably the hottest team in the league right now, and deservedly so. He’s got a lot of weapons, he plays a lot of people, he does a hell of a job with them. We played well enough, we didn’t play smart enough… They didn’t turn it over at all, give them credit… I’m going to leave here with a better basketball team.’
On Jaxon Kohler’s last turnover
After being asked if Izzo probably wanted Kohler to kick the ball out and reset the offense after rebounding his miss, instead of taking the turnover: ‘No insult, but if it’s that obvious to a writer, it’s probably the right thing to do. He just lost his mind for a minute. Give him credit, he went and got the rebound, give him credit, he bullied it in there…’
On the turnovers
‘This one should be blamed to the coach… But the players should be blamed too, some of those were ridiculous. But give them a little credit too, I thought it was the most physical game I’ve been in in the Big Ten in a while and it doesn’t surprise me, because Mick coming from Cincinnati he’s brought that out here… but it was a physical game both ways and I’m not sure we handled that well from the guard position… Some of the turnovers, I mean, we should give helmets to some of the people in the first row, because the ball was kind of flying over there and it was BS.’
Other takeaways:
Tom Izzo also highlighted that he felt Jaden Akins is a good shooter who has a habit of turning good shots into bad shots, taking stepback threes and off-balance shots when he doesn’t have to. He also noted that he felt the team has been missing some offensive production from Kohler and Xavier Booker which has hurt them recently.
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This article originally appeared on Spartans Wire: What Tom Izzo had to say following Michigan State’s loss to UCLA
