Michigan State Basketball: Who's to blame after early tourney loss?

Michigan State basketball failed to reach the Sweet 16 for the third-straight season. How much blame does Tom Izzo deserve for another early exit?

Everyone wants someone to blame. The refs. The players. The coach.

Against Syracuse, it was easy to blame the refs during the game. Early in the second half they had to even out the fouls after both Orange big men both picked up three in the first half. The ticky-tacky calls went in Syracuse’s favor for the first six or so minutes in the second. Michigan State still held a lead, but Syracuse stayed tight and that was all it needed.

Fouls were an issue on both ends, but the two that stuck out for me were when Miles Bridges got hit on a breakaway layup and it wasn’t called. Instead, they took five minutes to determine who the ball touched last. Why else did Bridges stumble to the floor in a twisted position? The other foul was called on Jaren Jackson when he went up for an offensive rebound. At that point, there was about four minutes to go and Syracuse had just taken a 49-48 lead. On the play, Jackson had position for the rebound and had the ball yet Bourama Sidibe stuck his arm in and pulled Jackson’s shirt. I’m not sure the ref that called the foul can look at the tape and say he made the correct call.

If Jackson got the call, he would’ve been shooting free throws and Michigan State could’ve retaken the lead at the most. Even with a no call, Jackson had a free dunk or layup to retake a 50-49 lead.

That’s extremely relevant given how the final four minutes played out. Michigan State’s only points until the final seconds would come from an Xavier Tillman free throw.

I won’t blame the refs, though. The refs have been bad in every single game in the NCAA tournament and I’ve watched almost all of them. There are bad calls throughout and the NCAA doesn’t care if that’s the case. So be it.

The players are also a good place to turn when looking for blame. The Spartans ranked as one of the best shooting teams in the country coming in and shot it better than 40 percent from deep all season. They finished 8-for-37 from three and 17-of-66 from the field. Those aren’t good numbers, especially with a number of them wide open.

But you can’t say these guys didn’t try. The Spartans had a ridiculous 29 offensive rebounds, which ended up being seven more than what they had on the defensive end. That doesn’t happen often. Sure, they missed shots, but these are college kids. They should be put in better positions if the shots aren’t falling, which they clearly weren’t in the first half.

That leads me to Tom Izzo, who has already been blasted by plenty of people across the Internet.

“Izzo’s worst coaching performance over the course of the season. Never found a way to maximize all the talent on the roster.”

That may be true, but for Izzo’s sake, I’ll try and analyze how Izzo coached with a level head. To get this out of the way, I’ve been critical of Izzo’s coaching the past two seasons, so this isn’t anything new.

I wondered why he didn’t give more playing time to Alvin Ellis III when a playmaker was needed last season. I said it was best to believe in Izzo in the middle of the 2016-17 season when he was playing Kenny Goins more often than Nick Ward. It was the same case in the loss against Minnesota in last year’s Big Ten tournament. I thought before this season that there weren’t as many questions. He had the experience and another NBA talent in Jackson. After the first loss to Michigan, I again wondered what his thoughts were with some questionable lineups.

I said Izzo had questions to answer a year ago and he still hasn’t answered them. The loss to Kansas last season was chalked up to the Jayhawks having more talent and Michigan State lacking experience. That can’t be an excuse anymore. Syracuse has a young team that struggled to score all season, yet everyone in the country knows how it plays. Everyone. Jim Boeheim loves to run zone and play as slow as possible.

The Orange really only have three guys that are threats on the offensive end unless Marek Dolezaj is feeling good, then it’s three-and-a-half. This is the same team that lost at home to a Notre Dame team without Matt Farrell and Bonzie Colson. The Irish shot 5-of-21 from three in that game. How did the Irish win even though they weren’t shooting well from deep? They attacked. They won it in the final seconds with a layup. Their final 14 points were from layups, dunks and free throws because they attacked the zone defense.

The same goes for Duke when it beat Syracuse 60-44 back in February. The Blue Devils couldn’t hit a shot from deep (2-for-18) and decided to attack down low. That ended up working to perfection because Wendell Carter and Marvin Bagley went a combined 13-of-20 for 35 points.

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Michigan State was the same team at the beginning of the game as it was at the end. It jacked up threes. It held the ball too long on the perimeter and jacked threes when the shot clock ran down. Was that its one and only game plan? There were times when Josh Langford or Cassius Winston broke between the zone and things opened up, but that rarely happened at the end of the game. There were even times when the man at the top of the key got the ball and set up open shots for teammates, but as I said before, when you miss open shots for 20 minutes, you find new ways to attack.

In regards to the players on the court, there are truly no answers. Ben Carter hadn’t played more than 10 minutes since November. He played 23 on Sunday. Jaren Jackson Jr. played 15 minutes and foul trouble wasn’t the reason he was sitting in the second half.

Xavier Tillman played a great game in his 22 minutes, but I’m not sure he was the answer over Nick Ward. It’s not like MSU needed Ward to defend anyone. Again, Syracuse has three guys that can score and it usually involves a bad three or a 1-on-1 drive. Ward is a better finisher around the rim, draws more fouls and is a better free-throw shooter than Tillman. If Ward transfers away from Michigan State I wouldn’t be surprised (he last played with 10:29 on the clock). Izzo has gone away from the big man for the last two seasons mainly for defensive reasons. On Sunday, he didn’t have to play defense, yet was still on the bench. The good news is that he’s still working to get better.

Carter playing over Jackson (or anyone) is the biggest question. Izzo has to answer why Carter was in the game when Michigan State had the ball with 1:38 left on the clock and down by one point. Up until then, he had done little to help the Spartans on the scoreboard. Maybe he was getting guys open looks on the perimeter, but that didn’t matter because no one was making shots.

Instead, Carter was left in the game and had a wide-open, five-foot shot to take the lead, yet passed it up. I’m not blaming Carter because he hasn’t been in that situation in two years or maybe even his career. This is a guy that missed all of last season and played sparingly this season. If Jackson was in that position, there’s almost a guarantee that he would go to the hoop and either dunk or do something positive. Instead, MSU was left with another three pointer that rimmed out. Before that, Carter had an open jumper at the free-throw line with just under two minutes left and he bricked it.

I can go through the numbers and show why Carter actually didn’t help as much as Izzo thought against the zone, but it doesn’t matter anymore. He was subbed in at the 13:33 mark in the second half and wasn’t taken out until there were six seconds left. Even with late free throws, the Spartans scored just one point per minute while Carter was on the floor.

Izzo had a game plan of using Carter and it completely backfired. Not even once did he think to use a combination of Miles Bridges at the four and Jaren Jackson or Nick Ward at the five. Wouldn’t having someone that can shoot consistently from the top of the key benefit in a game against the zone? According to Tom Izzo in 2018, the answer is no. The answer ended up being a six-year senior that is a fine passer, but one that hadn’t played healthy basketball since January 2016. Not a likely NBA lottery pick named Jaren Jackson. Maybe there’s something to five-star guys not coming to Michigan State after all.

The final piece of the coaching blunder came with less than four seconds left when Izzo didn’t have Winston purposely miss his second free throw. Maybe Michigan State could’ve gotten a late steal, but wouldn’t a better idea have been to try grabbing a 30th offensive rebound?

To close the 2017-18 season, it’s best left with quotes from seniors Gavin “Skilling” Schilling and Tum Tum Nairn, per Cody Tucker from LSJ, who combined for two minutes in their final collegiate game.

Schilling: “My role? I don’t know, ask coach. I’m not sure why. I guess he felt like … I don’t know. I don’t know. It sucks. For me not to play in my last game of my career, it sucks.”

Nairn: “It’s part of life. Basketball is what we play, so it hurts. It sucks when you lose a game and you don’t have any more…”

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Michigan State Basketball: Who is to blame after another early tourney loss?

By Adam Zdroik | Mar 19, 2018

Michigan State basketball failed to reach the Sweet 16 for the third-straight season. How much blame does Tom Izzo deserve for another early exit?