Michigan State Basketball: 3 takeaways from avoidable loss at Wisconsin

1. Michigan State is a completely different team on the road

No one likes to admit this, but take Michigan State away from the Breslin Center and it’s as beatable as any team in the conference.

Just look at the Spartans’ last four road games in Big Ten play. Outside of a dominant performance at Minnesota, Michigan State went down 15 in the first half against Purdue, Indiana and Wisconsin. In two of those games, the Spartans nearly came back but couldn’t quite get that final push. Against Purdue, it was just a complete meltdown and the tape has been burned.

This, however, was more disappointing because the poor early start was avoidable. Wisconsin was making some shots, sure, but the defense was poor and the offense couldn’t hit anything.

In the second half, we saw a team that should have shown up from the get-go. It shouldn’t take a Tom Izzo reaming at halftime to wake you up and maybe he should just use those speeches before the game so Michigan State can go up 15 early.

On the road, this team tends to shrink under the pressure early on. Usually the Spartans settle down at a certain point, but on Saturday, it was too little too late.

Cutting the Wisconsin lead to three with under 10 minutes left was huge, but they couldn’t capitalize after that. Was it the road atmosphere? Potentially, but it’s more of a mental block than anything else.

I won’t say this team is soft because I don’t believe that, but there is a major mental roadblock for them when they’re not at home.