Everything Tom Izzo said after Michigan State beat Michigan

The Spartans got a big home win over their archrivals to keep pace atop the Big Ten standings

Michigan State men's basketball defeated rival Michigan, 83-67, on Saturday at the Breslin Center to improve to 16-4 overall and 7-2 in the Big Ten. Here's what head coach Tom Izzo had to say about the Spartans' victory.

On the game, on Michigan:

“Well, if you can imagine, it was a big game for us. It was a good game, I guess, from our end. But [Michigan] played very well early. I thought they really hurt us on the boards. We had a few turnovers that were sloppy in that first half, but the difference in the game is we had 13 [turnovers] they had 13. So, we didn’t get hurt there. What hurt was their offensive rebounding, and I thought [Moussa] Diabate did a hell of a job on that.”

“I thought we shot pretty well from the [free throw] line. We didn’t defensive rebound good enough, but that’s a good basketball team. That’s every bit the team that was a Top 10 team [in preseason]. I think their best basketball is in front of them, just because they’re starting to play well together.”

“I thought we did well on [Michigan small forward Caleb] Houston too, who’s been on fire lately.”

"Michigan’s good. They’re good. They have a good team. I thought we did a decent job on [Michigan point guard Devante] Jones too, who’s been playing well. But, this game is about ‘shots go in, shots don’t go in’ and today, our shots went in and theirs didn’t. And lately, their shots have gone in and ours haven’t.”

“Don’t slight Michigan. I’m the first to tell you what I think of everything, and they’re going to be [playing] their best basketball in the next ten games too. They played awfully hard, and maybe got a little tired. Maybe that was partly their [smaller] crowd, and the number of subs that we ran in on them. We just kept running people at them.”

On Michigan State:

“I love the place, I love our students and I love when the place is electric like that. I think that today was a good win for Michigan State, and Michigan State means the world to me.”

On defending Hunter Dickinson:

“We didn’t double down on Dickinson, but that was kind of the game plan. I guess when you don’t shoot as well from three, and they’ve been shooting the daylights out the last three games. This is the way the year goes. They played three or four games in a row where they didn’t play very well, and then they played three games in a row where I think they played very well. In this game, I don’t know how [Juwan Howard] felt about how they played, but they didn’t shoot it as well, and if the ball doesn’t go in, that’s a problem. I thought Marcus [Bingham Jr.] did a pretty good job until he got in foul trouble.”

“We felt like we had to move their bigs around. We did a decent job. At times, we screwed up some of that too, that I think we’re going to be able to work on. But we did some good things, and they did some good things. They get the ball into [Dickinson] and he’s on the block, it’s hard. As always, you’re frustrated that I didn’t double but the one time we doubled – we didn’t double on him, we doubled on someone we weren’t supposed to double on at all, and they hit the one three.”

“Joey said to me, he really couldn’t handle him, and…who’s allowed to do what? Displacement goes both ways. Can we displace them? Can they displace us? And [Joey] said, if they’re not going to call it that way, I’m just going to try to front him and hip him. I said, ‘be my guest’ and he did. It was he and DJ’s decision, and it was a good decision. [Dickinson] still scored some, but we made it a little harder on him, forced him out a little farther. It was a calculating chance. Do you want to give up a three, or give up a two? And we did what we did. If it went the other way, we probably would have kicked ourselves.”

On transition offense:

“Our game plan was to run. We got some open ones.”

On turnovers:

“The worst part about our turnovers was, this was a game I think they had four layups, direct layups and one three-point play [off turnovers]."

On defense:

“I guess our defense must have been pretty good to hold them to 37 [percent from the floor] and 15 [percent from three-point range]. Another key is, even though they had 17 offensive rebounds, in second-chance points we had one more than they did. Our defense stopped that too, and that was encouraging.”

On Max Christie:

“I thought Max was phenomenal in the first half, and I thought did a very good job defensively on [Michigan guard Eli] Brooks, who I still think is one of my favorite players. He does a lot of things and Max did a hell of a job on him.”

“We decided to put him in some ball screens, put the ball in his hands a little bit more. And I thought he answered the ball. He still doesn’t know to make all the kick outs and that, there were a couple times [he missed those]. But I’ll tell you, that kid, he was in here watching film. I told you when it happened – What was he 2-for-16 in the two losses? – he’s not cocky enough to not let it bother him, but he’s got that perfect demeanor that he’s confident in himself, but he was upset by how he played. So, he did the old fashioned thing. He just came in and worked, watched a little more film and he picks things up so fast.”

“You’ve got to do it on both ends. I don’t know how many minutes he played…[35], that’s a lot of minutes to try to run the break, be our guy there and then guard a guy like Brooks, who moves better than anybody in our league. So, hats off to Max.”

Malik Hall:

“I thought Malik’s energy in that first half, and the things he did, shots he made was phenomenal.”

On both Max Christie and Malik Hall:

“To be honest with you, Joey was struggling a little bit [in the first half] and Gabe was struggling a little bit. My point guards were a little up and down, but those two guys did a lot of damage. We got them threes.”

On Joey Hauser:

“It brought tears to my eyes to hear the crowd cheering, ‘Joey Hauser’. He gave me everything he had. He rebounded the ball, even though he didn’t get a lot of them. He hipped them, he did everything he could. But hitting those big threes made a difference.”

“He was getting mad at me. I went down and told [Denzel Valentine], I said, ‘Zel, does this look familiar?’ Then I saw Zel’s mom in the stands and I said, ‘Does this look familiar?’ And then I knew we were in good shape, because familiar is a good thing here. When people are getting on people it’s a good thing at our place.”

“He made a couple of mental mistakes, and he very seldom makes a mental mistake, to be very honest with you. I think my problem with Joey is he’s so unselfish that he’s never ready to shoot. And he’s one of my best shooters. I’ve told you that forever. So, maybe he was mad enough that he just said, ‘To hell with him, I’m going to shoot.’ The trick of that was, I was thinking, ‘Good’. I wasn’t upset about that, I was happy with it.”

“It wasn’t his shooting that really saved the day, it was the defense, diving on the floor, it was his energy level trying to cut out. [Michigan’s] two big are really good. It’s not an easy job for anybody. I’m just happy for him because he’s been through a lot. He’s an unbelievable kid, and guys love him. You really pull for guys like that. So, just because I got on him – I love my son, I get on him every day.”

On Michigan State’s depth, stamina:

“I think our depth is good. Our [power forwards] had 29 points and nine or ten rebounds, something like that. We’ve got a good one-two punch there.”

“I thought our depth did help – both point guards, both four men, Jaden Akins gave us some minutes, got a couple big plays. Julius Marble did a very good job in his time in there. We can play some guys. We’re still going to get Pierre Brooks…we’re going to get him some more time. He’s been playing very well in practice. I think we’ll be two-deep at each position, where I don’t feel afraid to sub guys.”

“That was our game plan. We thought we had to run every time to try to get [Dickinson moving]. Even in the ball screens, we’re just trying to move him around. I think he got tired, but I give him credit, he still battled. He was a horse. We felt running them would be a big part of the game for us, and maybe they got tired? I don’t know. I’m not in [Juwan’s] huddles. I had some guys that got tired too.”

On AJ Hoggard:

“I swear I wouldn’t do this, because when I do it, it ends up disastrous, but I do have to give AJ a lot of credit. He’s been in with me and [assistant coach Mark Montgomery] for two weeks, and I thought he played under control. Getting a double-double, getting 10 assists was a big deal for him.”

“The composure is the critical part. Playing off two feet, getting in [the paint] and spraying the ball out. He made a couple great passes. Figuring out when he had an ability to slither in there and get a shot. He didn’t have the charges that he normally has. So, I think he did play with a lot more composure. I was happy for him, because it’s been…a tough week on those point guards, week and a half. We felt like, if you don’t have a quarterback running your team, you can’t be any good.”

On Tyson Walker:

“I thought, at times, Tyson played pretty well too. But, tough game to be in when you haven’t been in it before.”

On point guards spreading the ball around:

“I took those two football guys, I had them explain to [our point guards]. I told Keon [Coleman], ‘If you get open and the quarterback doesn’t get you the ball, how do you feel?’ He said, ‘[I feel] like not running the routes as hard.’ That’s kind of our analogy in basketball. I didn’t think we were spraying the ball good. We’ve got to get Gabe [Brown] more touches too. I thought he got a little frustrated, but he did bounce back and made a couple big plays. We’ve got some weapons, we’ve got some pieces, we’ve just got to put them together.”

On the Breslin crowd:

“The crowd was unbelievable. It reminded me of old times, between COVID and all the other things, but the crowd was fun. Seeing Mel [Tucker] over there with all his guys, seeing our other coaches, it was an incredible environment.”

“The emotion of the game, you just can’t appreciate what that crowd does to you. I’m looking over at Mel and he’s got a smile through his mask. I said, ‘This is what this place is like.’ It’s been a weird couple years, as we all know, but I think that helps.”

“When you make a great play last year, those stupid dummies that were sitting up there, those cardboard cutouts, they didn’t cheer or yell. They didn’t do nothing. So, that all leads to the energy of everything. Everything goes together, and that’s the one thing that I’d like to get back here. President, AD, fans, coaches all on the same page, and this is one of the more difficult places in the country to play. We haven’t had that. And even a year or two before [COVID], there were issues, there were problems. So yeah, it felt good.”

On second half intensity:

“If those locker room walls could talk, right? I thought the end of the first half, the last six or seven minutes, we played with more intensity. I don’t know that intensity is right. I think we played smarter. We made some average plays, and those turnovers – you know, you throw it to them on an outlet pass and they dunk it. You throw it to them on another one and they lay it up and get fouled. Those things take a lot out of you, and I think we had four of them in the first half. We did do a better job, we vowed that we were going to play all 20 minutes and I thought we did.”

“I was upset with my team [at halftime]. I just didn’t think we were doing the things that we have to do, and we vowed that’s what we were going to do. We looked at some things. We looked at some coverages we thought we were having trouble with. We did a couple things that were unlike us, on purpose. Those were our coverages, and they were working, but we wanted to make some adjustments.”

“I think they beauty of a team in a rivalry game, I think they knew. We showed a little highlight tape before the game and it was about all the former guys that have built the place, and what it means to them. I said if you want to be a part of that – five to ten, and fifteen years from now, you’ve got to do your part. Because you’re not part of it if you don’t win these games.”

On team’s hustle, team’s potential:

“I agree with [Juwan Howard]. I thought in the first half, his team did. They got all the loose balls, they got all the rebounds. Mike Garland said to me after the game…that’s how we always played. We’re making progress. We’re just eyelashes away from being really, really good. As we continually knock down those turnovers, continually get a little smarter on some things. I think we have enough different weapons to throw at somebody. If they’ve got a good center, we can throw Marcus. If they’ve got somebody else, we can go Joey and Malik. We can go a lot of different ways, and that’s going to help us down the road.”

On players who’ve been written off, bouncing back:

“That’s been hard, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve done a lot more meetings and a lot more not riding [on players], and I don’t think that’s good. If a guy doesn’t do what he’s supposed to do, he should hear about it. And yet, between COVID, and the fragile-ness and the screwed up country we’re in right now – sorry – but as far as, you can’t say nothing to anybody, we did it a little different. We didn’t do it in front of anybody, but we had meetings. We had a lot of meetings this week, and just kind of went over film. [The film] was driving my assistants nuts, and I think we corrected some things.”

“I’ve got good guys. I’ve got no bad guys. I’ve got good guys. But, getting everything out of them is – there’s roadkill in doing that. But that’s what it’s all about. Unfortunately for me, I think it was Bo Schembechler that goes, ‘Those who stay will be champions’. In this day and age, that’s very true because everybody thinks they should just bolt. Thank God, I’ve got a bunch of guys who want to stay.”

“There’s gets to be that teetering time. AJ’s been there. So has Marcus. But I can tell you, some really good players in the past…there’s been a lot of guys that go through that. I think that’s the beauty of our program. I might get on them, but I never write them off. There’s very few kids I write off. I’m just going to keep pushing and pulling.”

On rescheduling the postponed Michigan game:

“There’s not a lot of time when you can redo it, and I don’t know what the efforts are. The Big Ten office is involved in that, but everything I hear [says] it’s going to be late, like in March. Maybe it’ll be like last year when we played four games in eight days or whatever it is. Personally, I don’t care. I just want to play all the games. Double-header. I’ll play them whenever.”