MSU's Izzo Accepts Blame for Poor Second Half vs. SJSU
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EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo said that he didn't do a good enough job at getting his team during the second half of the Spartans' 79-60 victory against San Jose State on Thursday night. MSU led by 23 at halftime, but the game was as close as 10 during the second half.
Izzo talked about that and much more following the game. Spartan Nation was there to capture the entirety of his press conference, and the full video is available down below.
Watch Tom Izzo here:
Additionally, a partial transcript of the presser can be read further down. This is just a small portion of a press conference that went a little more than 19 minutes, though, so watching the video is recommended.
Transcript
IZZO: They say there’s highs and lows in this job, and there were some highs and lows tonight. I really was looking forward to seeing how my team would respond to a little bit of success.
And let’s get this straight, because I get sick of people acting like we’ve accomplished something because we won a game against a good team. Big deal. Big deal. We didn’t shoot it very well in that game, we played well enough to win the game, that was it.
I wanted to see how we’d start out. I thought we started out — they missed some shots, but I thought we started out phenomenal.
Defense was great, we’re checking, we’re rebounding, we were running. We’re missing some shots, and we’re missing some damn free throws. But I thought the energy, the effort was there all the way through, ‘til halftime.
What happened at halftime? I did a poor job of getting my team ready to play the second half.
And we came out, and I had three key guys and all of them had good games for you [the media], for the fans, for their mommies, for their daddies, for their agents, for everybody else, they didn’t have good games for me.
Jeremy Fears [Jr.] played the best. He did everything I asked him to do. It wasn’t the threes he made at the end, that had zero with how he played. But he played with some passion.
We got fat and sassy at halftime, and for two seniors and a junior to get fat and sassy, that tells me that we’re not where we need to be, which is the good thing. So our fans won’t be fooled, the media won’t be fooled ‘cause we won one damn game.
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A 2025 graduate from Michigan State University, Cotsonika brings a wealth of experience covering the Spartans from Rivals and On3 to his role as Michigan State Spartans Beat Writer on SI. At Michigan State, he was also a member of the world-renowned Spartan marching band for two seasons.
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