I don’t have the emotional energy left to say much about what transpired today, but I will say this: I’m proud of how this Spartan team played today. They played like warriors and played well enough to win. When they left the court, the MSU contingent of fans (which I thought represented the university well both in numbers and rooting intensity) gave the players a well-deserved standing ovation.
Obviously, this one came down to officiating. I’m not going to claim the refs were blatantly incompetent (although Steve Grinczel offers up a pretty good critique). But if this game were called in a more typical manner, MSU wins by at least 10. (Box score is here, in case anyone wants to count up the 30 fouls; sadly there’s no breakdown of how many were called by Mr. Hightower.) The fouls called late in the game were indeed fouls. It’s what happened early in the game that helped determine MSU’s fate.
The ticky tack fouls called on Suton and Naymick in the first few minutes had a snowball effect. They forced Izzo to use Ibok, Gray, and Herzog throughout the game (plus Morgan at power forward more than normal). Ibok picked up his own quick three fouls, helping push Wisconsin into the double bonus midway through the first half. Both Ibok and Gray played poor perimeter defense on Butch, leading directly to at least 6 points I don’t think Suton or Naymick allow–plus there was Ibok’s foul of Bohannon on a made 3-pointer to cut the lead from 12 to 8 and spark the Wisconsin comeback. And if MSU wasn’t forced to play a three-point-guards-plus-Allen/Gray lineup in the closing minutes, I think they hold their lead and win the game.
I’ll give Wisconsin some credit–but not a lot of credit, because they only really did one thing well today. Butch and Landry know how to get the ball down low, hesitate with the ball, pump fake a few times, and get fouled. It worked today, so more power to them, but it’s an ugly way to win a basketball game. The MSU defenders should have adjusted, but that’s what happens when you’re playing awkward 7-footers who normally don’t see the court in key games.
There’s some room for criticism for Izzo slowing down the pace several minutes too early. MSU was at its best pushing the ball and creating transition opportunities. They stopped doing so with roughly 6 minutes left, slowing the pace to run clock in an attempt to protect the lead. That was about 3 minutes too early. Flowers was blanketing Neitzel at that point, and Lucas can’t be expected to consistently convert driving the lane with the shot clock running down. He did well to convert as many shots as he did. Given the balancing act Izzo had to pull today to keep his team on top, though, chalk this up only as relatively mild second-guessing.
Fundamentally, I think this team is playing as well as it has since end of the nonconference season. From that perspective, I’m optimistic about their NCAA Tournament chances. But this loss was simply as crushing as a loss could be from an emotional perspective. You dominate your fiercest rival for 30+ minutes playing at a serious disadvantage, only to have the game slip away from you at the end, costing you a golden opportunity to win a championship. Izzo after the game:
“I’m very disappointed in the outcome,” said Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, who was so upset he had to stop several times to compose himself in his postgame news conference. “I don’t plan on getting over this today. I don’t plan on getting over this tomorrow. On Monday I’ll get over it.”
Here’s hoping he and the Spartans really have capacity to get over it on Monday . . .
There’s nothing to say. I can’t stand wisconsin, and then this happens. This will bother me for the rest of the year.
I hear ya alamarand… I felt physically sick after todays game … bothers me to no end that even though this was an absolute screw-job from the opening tip (which should have been redone) – it goes in the record book as an L and MSU is done in the BTT… nothing can change that – etched in stone now… ugh… All I can hope for at this point is that MSU just destroys Wisconsin next year…
Yup. I hate Wisconsin. I’ve long hated Wisconsin. I’ll long continue to hate Wisconsin. This wasn’t really their fault. But this game I’ll look back on with disdain.
The officials sucked, but I also found myself yelling at the Spartan players too. Too often they made boneheaded fouls, especially given how tight the game was called. For instance, I think two guys fouled out when wrapping their arms around Badgers who clearly had control of the rebound. What was up with that? They thought the refs weren’t gonna whistle it? It was oh-too-obvious and yet they did it anyway.
Whine all you want but Neitzel could have won it at the end and choked. The refs blew calls against Wisconsin as well. I don’t recall Wisconin fans whining and blaming the refs when MSU beat Wisconsin in the past, like the 1990’s. It’s been so long I’d have to look it up.
This was one of those games you hate to see anyone lose. MSU showed the class and poise that they are known for and even though I’m a UW fan, I only have praise for MSU, not criticism. Even though UW won, I do have to agree that the officiating was suspect but it did go both ways. UW just pounded the ball more often than MSU. But I have to agree with Kurt (above) that given the officiating/foul situation you can’t just keep wrapping your arms around players late in the game because it is going to be an automatic whistle.
Honestly though, until UW consistently goes deep into the tournament each year, MSU will continue to be the measuring stick that all other teams in the Big Ten are measured against imo. There is still a bad taste in badger fans mouths from last year’s implosion as the #2 seed. MSU exposed the suspect UW offense today and I’m sure other tourney teams will take note. Good luck in the NCAA’s!
bo owns izzo. i’d be frustrated too.
i’m a badger fan, yes, but i wouldn’t want to play sparty in the ncaa’s. they should be a solid 6 seed and it’s very reasonable to say they could get into the sweet 16.
and blaming the referees? really guys? wisco gets to the line more than their opponent, like, always. it’s often normal for them to make more free throws than the opponent ATTEMPTS. haven’t you figured this out by now after all the beatings bucky has thrown you and the rest of the big ten since bo came to madison?
great game today though, really. i love neitzel even though his head bugs the heck outta me. he was great for the conference and i’ll miss seeing him compete.
This last claim that Neitzel choked is ridiculous and spiteful; the young man played two extraordinary games. Even fine shooters miss half of their three-point attempts. To place blame based on one miss in the final seconds…can we all say ‘insufficient sample size’?
Bite your tongue before you call any of these athletes ‘chokers’. (Didn’t Jason Bohanon miss a couple of free throws that would have iced the game?) Most of the people who tighten up in such situations in front of a gym full of people get weeded out long before they get to a D1 program. They’re watching these games on TV now–you know, like you and me.
At this point it just would not be fair to rub it in. And I will not miss Neitzel (mostly because he is an insane shooter). I would NOT want to play MSU again. I don’t want to be honest with you people but I have to. To this day I still get nauseated when I think of MSU going 4-0 against UW in 2000. So…the record since then is just payback. It would be nice to see Bo get to the Final Four too. Best of luck to ALL Big Ten teams in the Bid Dance!
Good luck in the BIG Dance…my bad.
Izzo is a crybaby with no class.
WI ADJUSTED to the way the refs were calling the game early… State did not. State stuck to their aggressive game plan and rotated guys in to take fouls. Ibok… 10 minutes, 5 fouls, 1 point? That strategy ALMOST worked…
why does college basketball even have referees? i mean come on, the losing team of a close game always plays exactly the same way as the winning team but for absolutely no good reason gets called for more fouls. come on sour michigan state fans.. wake up! i wonder if michigan state is still hubert davis’ team to beat in the big ten… or if wisco has cracked his power 16 yet? maybe another season?!
I’ve got some good ol’ Wisconsin cheese for your Michigan whine!!!
Wisconsin owns? Izzo is a bitch? how many final fours does wisconsin have since Bo came? 0? oh yea, thats right. 0
Classy responses, Wisconsin fans.
While I won’t say I hate Wisconsin (why should I?) I do think I would have been more disappointed if I’d thought at any point during this game that the Spartans were actually going to win. Somehow, though, I knew we wouldn’t. It feels exactly the same to me as the UCLA loss.
We were up by 12, but that doesn’t really matter when you give ten of those points right back with fouls. Fouling three-point shots (twice), refusing to push the ball to the basket, allowing Flowers (who’d had a horrible game) to get a couple easy picks for layups late, losing FOUR of your players in what seemed like less than a minute (which, if you count ’em, is eight free points), I just don’t know how else to say it.
Even with the ticky tack fouls, I think Izzo’s endgame was ridiculous. If all of your big men have 4 fouls, GO SMALL EARLIER AND SAVE THEM FOR THE END. With the four guards and Herzog combination you should at least be able to trade baskets with Wisconsin until you need the defense Naymick and Suton provide.
I’m disappointed by this loss, but I’m even more disappointed with the fact that I’ve lost all faith in the Spartans’ play, in their ability to hold a sizeable lead with less than five minutes to play. I almost prefer the way it was last year, with all the comeback wins. That way, you at least didn’t expect to come away smiling (or at least sighing in relief).
Good game, Wisconsin. I hope you lead by 12 with five minutes left today, and lose the lead with less than thirty seconds to go. Then you can throw up the game-winning (or not) three just before the buzzer, and make it (or not).
I just want to remind everyone here how amazing we would have felt if Neitzel had somehow punched that three through the bottom of the bucket, if he’d somehow done that. One shot. He didn’t get it this time, but think of all the times he has.
Let’s go get ’em in the Big Dance. GO GREEN!
“Wisconsin owns? Izzo is a bitch? how many final fours does wisconsin have since Bo came? 0? oh yea, thats right. 0”
Wisconsin is now 11-3 against Michigan State since Ryan arrived in 2001, including two wins this year.
http://cbs.sportsline.com/collegebasketball/gamecenter/recap/NCAAB_20080315_MIST@WI
bo owns izzo. bo has won the same amount of national titles that izzo has since bo got to wisconsin. 0. that’s right, 0. who gives a flying f**k about final fours? what do dinal fours give you besides warm fuzzies?
let’s talk big ten…
how many big ten regular season titles has izzo won since bo came to madison? 1. wisconsin? 3.
what about conference tournament titles you say? msu, 0. wisconsin, 1 (and hopefully 2 by 5PM CST tomorrow).
live in the now adam. it’s bo ryan’s time.
why are Wisconsin fans being allowed to come on here and post obscenities?? this kind of crap is why your program is the most disliked in the league and gets no national respect (which is why you’re all so jealous of MSU).
Of course next year, Bo’s boys have to come to EL and we don’t go to Madison, Bucky better make sure Hightower is working that one.
Meanwhile all the State fans who have Ford Field tickets should be ready to go and cheer like hell for Wisconsin’s opponents, that is assuming Wisky can get past the first weekend, no sure thing, right UNLV??
spartanproducer,
Why are you cherry-picking the pro-Wisconsin posts with obscenities?
I went to Madison from 98-02, when Michigan State was clearly the class of the league. Call it jealousy if you want, but I think every college basketball (or just sports) fan wants to know what it feels like to have your team (and alma mater) on top. Bo Ryan has allowed Wisconsin fans just that for the last seven years.
I certainly wouldn’t call Wisconsin the class of the league, but at least they’re in the discussion every year (whether pre-season projected to finish 1st or 9th). That to me is extremely satisfying.
To have that mitigated by opposing fans calling the program “the most disliked in the league” (when I don’t understand how anyone could dislike Wisconsin’s program), saying we’re simply the referees darlings, or calling out tough NCAA losses (George Mason), is frustrating.
Anyway, I know I’m on a Michigan State blog less than 24 hours after a grueling defeat, so I probably shouldn’t care at all, but I sort of do.
KJ, your blog has been great, not least because the tone has been measured, the comments intelligent. This appears to have ended, but hopefully, the idiots will leave soon enough.
I share your anguish. this was one painful game, and I agree the die was cast in the first ten minutes of the game, the end was perhaps ineluctable once all of MSU’s big men had two fouls at the half.
The smarter of the wisconsin bloggers above argue that Wisconsin made adjustments to the way in which the game was called, while MSU did not. This then points to the greater “discipline”, “thoughness”, and of course “better coaching” at UW, that is now dangerously close to becoming the conventional wisdom. Maybe that is true, I wonder at this point. I certainly did wonder throughout the game why MSU did not go to a Zone, since UW had no strategy but to throw it inside and hope for a foul.
I also wondered not for the first time, how Ryan can seem to get so much more out of his clumsy, slow big players than Izzo has gotten out of Naymick, Suton and so on. I mean, they made a few shots when it mattered, and all seem to be able to shoot from the outside.
And, I think it is silly to argue that the refs are out to get MSU. I agree with you that they are often terrible, wildly inconsistent, and much too willing to take the game out of the hands of the players. They are ruining these games, and if I was an impartial observer of yesterday’s game, my dominant reaction would have been one of boredom, since the game was constantly stopped to allow for UW players to shoot fouls. I guess my big question is why is MSU so often on the short end of these reffing nightmares. Again, the UW answer is that Bo “coaches” his players not to foul. It is clearly true that OW just does not have players as disastrous on the defensive side as Ibok or Gray. But, of course, that is why they hardly get off the bench any more. I just don’t see that when I watch these games. I see Neitzel getting hip checked repeatedly when he comes off the high screen by Butch or Landry. I see Butch and Steinsma (not sure of the spelling) coming over the top on rebounding pretty consistently (Butch in particular is just not very quick with his feet, and usually about as fast as Naymick reacting to the trajectory of the shot) , I see Bohannon hand checking Lucas everytime he drives into the lane. Finally, I see UW’s swing offense producing moving screens 20 times a game. In sum, I don’t see great “moving of the feet”, smart defense. I see the kind of physical “beat you up” defense that is the trait in the big ten, from Keady to Izzo.
All coaches try to impose their will on refs. They don’t make adjustments so much as they dare the refs to keep making the same call, again and again. I think Ryan is great at doing this. His players get called for a few early fouls, but then the same behavior stops getting called. The hip checking of Neitzel off the high screen is a good example; it got called once early on, and then, UW basically got to do it on every MSU possession. UW bolggers will call me partial, no doubt, but I did not see a team play less physical yesterday as the game wore on. On the contrary, the more MSU held back in fear of getting called, the more UW manhandled htem, particularly under the boards.
In the glory years, Izzo was a master at this “managing” of the refs. Remember the championship year, in which MSU beat up on other teams, particularly in crunch time. Iowa State, Syracuse, Florida fans to this day feel like MSU got away with murder. For whatever reason, Izzo lost this ability to manage the refs after the early 2000s. Since then, and particularly obviously with Hightower, the refs will call the same fouls again and again, even if it means 40 fouls in a game. Why is this? In large part, I think it is reputational. I really think MSU is regularly hurt by its reputation of being physical, and undisciplined. I think it is only human for refs to use these “signalling devices” to help them ref. They know going in that Morgan will travel a couple times a game, or that Suton is slow and will hold on to his player, and they look to make these calls. They feel justified in making them, as well, because of MSU’s past glory, the fact that these teams are clearly not as good as the glory teams, and yet try to play the same way.
One more point: once the refs called a technical on Ryan, one could guess what would come. it legitimated the way the game was called after that.
Robert,
if you care about what other teams fans think of your program, then you’ve attached your cart to the wrong horse (Ryan). I talk to fans from other schools, I see other message boards, Wisconsin is hated, why?? Try getting to shoot more free throws even though your team plays just as physical as anyone else. Try having a smug, little coach who is liked by no one, does that matter?? Probably not, but that’s the guy you’ve got.
As for me, picking on certain Wisconsin comments, the reason this site has been great all season as that it hasn’t been lowered to typical internet “fan stupidity”, several of your Badger brethren did that, thus I will react. No differently than when visiting fans come to MSU and instigate and provoke stuff, you don’t go on the road and do that kind of stuff. Quite honestly you’re acting like Michigan football fans, and I think everyone knows what kind of people they are. If you all want to sit on the Badger boards and mock us, laugh at Izzo, do whatever, that’s fine, I don’t go there, but when you guys come to a Spartan place and do that, then we will react.
spartanproducer.
Fair enough. I still don’t understand why you lump all Badger fans together as though we’re one entity, but oh well.
As for the rest, I’ll take you’re strongly implied advice, and head on back to where I came from (self-congratulatory Badger boards of course).
“I talk to fans from other schools, I see other message boards, Wisconsin is hated, why??”
Why? Probably because Wisconsin has been the best team in the league year in and year out recently. You know, kinda like scUM and Ohio State in football. Success breeds contempt.
I don’t understand all the negativity, this was a good game that unfortunately probably had to much to do with the referees. I doubt the loss in the end helps or hurts either the badgers or spartans much if any. As fans of both schools, it is a good rivalry and honestly with the BT being down, it is probably the best rivalry in the last few years and hopefully for the next few. I’ve been to both east lansing and madison for these games (UW alum) and I have had nothing but great fan experiences in east lansing (however football is a different story) for the mens bb games. Good luck in the NCAA’s.
The refs sucked for both sides. The calls were inconsistent. Some players picked up ticky-tack fouls that should have been no calls. Others got mugged with no call or the call on the wrong team. The refs seldom called moving screens, and then only in the most obvious times.
One of the big differences in the foul totals was Wisconsin continually fed the post — MSU did not. Sutton was very effective when they played in Madison. Yesterday he hardly touched the ball. MSU set perimeter screens like crazy — but didn’t work the ball in down low at all.
MSU also helped the refs out with stupid fouls down the stretch. In the last eight minutes, they only called obvious calls. Up until that point the foul count was almost even. When a big guy jumps out a knocks down a three point shooter, it gets called. Likewise, when you wrap you a player whose already pulled down a rebound, it gets called.
Regardless of the outcome of the game, one team was going to have a legitimate beef with the officiating — it was terrible. If you are going to complain, re-watch the tape for the ticky-tack fouls on Flowers. Or the number of moving screens set. Or the flagrant “foul” when Flowers got decked.
One of the conceits of Wisconsin fans is that Ryan does not recruit well, but is a great teacher, who take middling talent and molds it into a great “team”, year after year. This is in contrast to MSU, where Izzo is an extraordinary recruiter but his players do not improve. I was curious to see whether this was the case. In fact If you add up the stars accorded to recruits by Rivals, Wisconsin has a slight edge over MSU since 2004. If you look at the line ups yesterday, Wisconsin had two 5 star recruits (Butch and Kranbbenhoft), getting minutes, and MSU had only one (Gray). In sum, the programs were roughly comparable in the level of talent they were bringing to campus, albeit with a small but pretty clear advantage in talent to UW; and Ryan could not claim to have turned some unknown geeky farm boy into a great ball player. I would add that MSU was considerably younger a team, giving considerably more minutes to underclassmen, while Wisconsin basically did not give significant tiime to a single freshman.
nice point Hubert, the fact that State has only had two seniors total the past two years (one star and one solid but limited role player) has hurt us. Hopefully, the next few years will be a stretch where we have balance in our classes.
Yikes, I leave the site alone for just 24 hours and look what happens. Well, I guess I’ve been trying to encourage comments all year . . .
I’ve deleted the one comment that clearly went way over the line in term of vulgar language. My goal is to err on the side of keeping the language clean and the discourse relatively civil. I’ll leave the rest of it; Saturday’s outcome was bound to create ill feelings on both sides.
The only comment I’ll take issue with above is that the calls on Flowers were “ticky tack.” Bumping a jumphooter to get him out of rhythm is physical contact creating an advantage for the defense–which is the essence of a foul.
Comment 21 got caught in the spam filter.
For the record: A large number of Badger fans were directed here by a link someone posted on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website along with a comment directing people to “leave some messages at this obnoxious Mich St fan’s blog.”
So the obnoxious comments can be chalked up to that. And a number of the Badger comments above were on the reasonable side.
As much as the Wisconsin basketball team’s recent run of success against MSU makes me feel fairly hostile toward them, I have no reason to think Wisconsin fans are generally classless as a group. To the contrary, my interactions with them have been positive ones.
The last seven years under Bo Ryan have been great, especially beating MSU. It makes up for the four losses against them in 2000. Now maybe MSU fans know how we felt that year, and I ‘m not sorry about rubbing it in. The Badgers are looking good in the years ahead. I laugh when I see the Spartans on here saying next year will be different. Why? How will things change? If anything, the Badgers will be better, and you guys lose Drew. All we lose is Brian Butch and his 12 points a game. Plenty of people to fill in for him too. Good luck next year too.
yeah