MSU’s Tom Izzo Readies For ‘Chess Match’ Against Juwan Howard
Michigan clinched an outright Big Ten championship Thursday in blowing out Michigan State, 69-50. Sunday’s rematch will be about nothing but pride for the Wolverines, though head coach Juwan Howard insisted in the postgame, ‘it matters.’
It means a whole lot to the Spartans, firmly on the NCAA Tournament bubble. Head coach Tom Izzo likened the back-to-back games to part of an NBA playoff series given the short turnaround between games.
“One thing my friends in the NBA told me … you’d love the playoffs because it’s a big chess match,” he said. “You play a game, the next day you go back and you say, okay, what did you do differently? How do you think they’re going to take that away? What did you not do well; how are you going to change that?'
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"We did a lot of that last night when we got back and this morning on a couple of things. We didn’t think we needed major improvements, really, on the defensive end, at all. On the offensive end, they played good defense, take nothing away, but we played bad offense. The ball movement and what we did from the point is not acceptable, so we’re going to have to do a better job of that.”
In reality, Sunday's game is more similar to an end of the season home-and-home in which one team is looking ahead to it's No. 1 seed while the other is vying for one of the last playoff spots. The Spartans could all but punch their ticket with a victory over the Wolverines — in that sense, it’s significant.
But MSU will have to bring its ‘A’ game no matter how the Wolverines approach it. They’re overmatched at most positions, and they got nothing from their transition offense against U-M. They also went 0-for-9 from three-point range, not even getting good looks until Michigan had the game in hand.
“I watched the film and it made me nauseous,” Izzo said Friday. “I just thought we did some things we didn’t need to do …
“Josh [Langford] wasn’t quite himself, and Aaron [Henry], I thought we went too much one-on-one. We didn’t move the ball as well as I would like, and we didn’t run as much as I would like. We usually get 60 percent of our buckets off of fast-breaking, and that’s where we’re hurting.”
He brought up the loose balls again and said they’d try to guard the Wolverines a bit differently, adding playing Langford and Henry at the point was the recipe for fatigue. He also mentioned Henry’s flagrant foul he felt changed the momentum of the game.
“After watching the film, there were some disappointing things we did,” he said. “The deal right before halftime, we could have cut that thing to a three-point lead. It’s hard to tell anymore. I don’t know what a hook and hold is, what this is, what that is.
“[But] it doesn’t matter. We haven’t done a good job overcoming a little adversity when something strikes like that.”
In addition, U-M’s lead ballooned to 28 in the second half. The game wasn’t decided by one play.
Regardless, Izzo seems excited for the rematch and expects his guys to enter with confidence on Senior Day.
“I think our guys are confident that they (Michigan) are a very good team, but that we just have to stop those little lulls — especially at the end of the first half —and see if that can make a difference,” he said. “Somehow, someway we’re going to make sure the rivalry still heats up. But it’s not the same where a couple hundred people [are there] compared to 15,000.”
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