MSU's Tom Izzo Identifies Issues Following Home Loss to Duke

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo made it clear what he believes to be some of the issues his team will have to address following Saturday's 66-60 loss to fourth-ranked Duke.

"I don't feel very good about what happened today," Izzo said after the game. "I didn't like the way we did some things that are staples of our program."

He's going to have plenty of time to address those things, since MSU's next game is not until next Saturday at Penn State. The Spartans had gotten out to a 1-0 Big Ten start against Iowa on Tuesday.

A full video of Izzo's postgame press conference was captured by Spartan Nation and has been provided below.

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The main thing that seemed to drive Izzo up the wall the most was his team allowing the Blue Devils to grab a few offensive rebounds off of missed free throws. Duke's superstar freshman, Cameron Boozer, was especially a problem in that regard, in addition to his 18 points, 15 rebounds, and five assists.

"We keep track, we've gone a year, we're not missing a free-throw cutout," Izzo said. "We had four of them today. One led to a three, two others led to baskets."

The main issues seem to be pretty fixable, given Izzo's words.

"There were coverages that we just didn't do," he said. "Those are effort-related and intelligence-related, not skill-related. And that stuff bothers me, so that means I didn't do a good enough job getting it through.

"I give Duke [credit], before I go off on us, because I ain't happy about us. But I have a lot of respect for Jon [Scheyer] and the job he's done. It's why we can't beat him: he always has a superstar that he can go to [Boozer]. He had two points in the first half, 16 the second half, including getting three of the four missed free throws, which is disgusting. Ridiculous."

Another interesting little part is that Izzo seemed to be encouraged by the performance of Jeremy Fears Jr., despite the point guard's 0-for-10 shooting performance. Fears had found other ways to impact the game, most notably dishing out 13 assists to just one turnover.

"I thought Jeremy, to be honest with you, played really well, really well defensively," Izzo said. "He missed some shots; he missed a couple of open shots. I did not like the runners he took. I wish he would have just pulled up and shot him. But he missed the two layups at the end. That didn't matter."

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