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DotComp: Don't kid yourself Izzo; this was a pretty good win

East Lansing, Mich. - There is one part of the world that is back to normal. The part in which Michigan State is 14-2, No. 10 in the nation and we are wringing our hands about the things that went wrong and why the Spartans aren’t winning with more ease and style points.

First of all, Michigan State still isn’t that good. Good enough to be a handful of points better than 12 of the 14 teams they’ve played, but lacking start-to-finish knockout power. For now.

Tom Izzo has been telling us his team is still a work in progress. He has warned us to keep things in perspective based on the favorable Big Ten schedule Michigan State has played thus far.

Give credit to Michigan State for wading through the schedule without any pratfalls. The Spartans have beaten the teams they are supposed to beat: Northwestern, Penn State, Nebraska and Minnesota twice.

But I swear this Minnesota team that the Spartans beat 71-69 at Breslin Center on Wednesday night is pretty good. Wolverines would agree.

Minnesota threatens you with a stretch four who can shoot from 3 or drive, a big man who out-bashed MSU’s Marcus Bingham, a wing who can drive it, and a big point guard who does most things well.

They put a good defensive stopper on Gabe Brown, and held him to seven field goal attempts.

Your team had better have a good shooting night against Minnesota if you’re not going to have an edge at the foul line or on the glass, and if you turn it over twice as often as the Gophers.

That was precisely the predicament for the Spartans on this night. Turnovers were a bit of a problem again (13 of them). Michigan State had no edge on the glass. Free throw opportunities were about equal. So Michigan State had to win by making some clutch shots - which the Spartans did through the late stages of the second half.

Even Izzo seemed to forget some of those shots.

“They (Minnesota) executed a lot better than we did,” Izzo said, “although we shot the ball, I guess, really well.”

He took a second look at the stat sheet like he didn’t quite believe it.

Michigan State shot 52 percent from the field?

Through the fog of basketball war, drunk with excitement about Joey Hauser’s game-winning lay-up at the buzzer, you might have forgotten that Michigan State went on a stretch of making 7-of-9 field goal attempts from the 8:37 mark of the second half to the 2:15 mark, turning a 54-53 lead into a 69-64 lead.

That was the portion of the game in which the Spartans looked like a Top 10 team and probably demoralized Gopher fans with their resolve and shot-making skill. But the Gophers weren't demoralized. They kept swinging.

MOMENTS THAT MATTERED

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The binge began with Malik Hall nailing a roll-and-replace 3-pointer from the top of the key. This came right after a time out. Izzo drew it up that way. And he drew it up for Hall instead of Hauser.

Hall and Hauser were on the court together for the final 10 minutes of the game. (More on that later.)

Hauser is the guy who’s supposed to be the 3-point marksman. And he may live up to that at some point this season. He’s shooting 33 percent from 3-point range, which is pretty good. But he has 40-percent capability in those wrists. Anything above 33 percent is productive 3-point accuracy.

Hall is regarded as a pretty good range shooter. But he’s been an astonishing 57 percent from 3-point range this season (16-of-28).

So Izzo went to Hall as the kickout man and Hauser as the roll man on this play, with Hall coming open for the trey. (Remember this play. Michigan State tried to run the exact same play in the final seconds for the game-winner, but ended up having to freelance).

Hall finished with 7 points on 3-of-4 shooting, and 1-of-1 from 3-point range. He added seven rebounds.

He was the most efficient Spartan on the court. And he came forward with great skill and nerve when Michigan State needed it.

A minute after Hall's three-pointer, Michigan State went to Hall again. This time off a sideline in-bound play. Hall was the trigger man, delivering the in-bound, and then he sprinted to the block on the opposite side of the court, where an entry pass would be waiting for him.

Minnesota anticipated the play and reserve Minnesota center Charlie Daniels fiddled with Hall hard, and bucked him off the block. With the shot clock running down, Hall created space for himself and hit a difficult turn-around jumper along the baseline to give Michigan State a 59-55 lead.

You might think Michigan State was fortunate to win this game. But those two shots by Hall were big-time. Shane Battier couldn’t have done it better.

Next possession, Max Christie faked a 3-pointer against a hard close-out. Offered two dribbles into the lane, shot fake, step-through, 16-footer.

High skill, ladies and gentlemen. Forget about turnovers and strange sub patterns and a big missed free throw at the end. Michigan State had some talented guys canning some difficult shots during this stretch. That one put Michigan State up 61-55 with 6:30 left.

Next possession, Hall was at it again. Facing up against big man Curry, Hall offered a jab fake left, a hard drive into the lane, two pump fakes, and a fall-away jumper to give Michigan State a 63-57 lead with 5:31 to go.

Michigan State wasn’t missing. And these were not easy shots. These were Top 10 shot makers.

Roy Williams might have checked his stat sheet to see who this No. 25 was, who had come off the bench and suddenly was making All-Big Ten type of shots.

He’s Malik Hall. And he seems to be there when Michigan State needs him.

Two possessions later (after Brown missed a 3-pointer), point guard AJ Hoggard drove and missed a lay-up in traffic. But Hauser hustled to the offensive glass. The coaches like the way Hauser works on the offensive boards. When they grade film, Hauser is usually atop the list at things like defensive help assignments and rebounding accountability.

This time Hauser went hard to the glass, got a running shoulder inside of big Curry, held that position on his way to the rim, and Hoggard’s miss ended up in Hauser’s hands. He convered the put-back to give Michigan State a 65-60 lead with 4:20 left. That was a hard-working offensive board and bucket by Hauser.

Two possessions later (after a Gabe Brown charge turnover), Hauser posted up, attempted a dropstep move, looked like he might be in position to score for a moment, but became off-balance as tends to happen to Hauser a tad too often.

But he saved the situation by kicking it out to Hoggard, who nailed a 16-footer to give Michigan State a 67-64 lead with 3:12 to play.

You might have been wondering two things at this juncture:

1. Why weren’t Marcus Bingham and Tyson Walker in the game?

2. If Michigan State is making all of these shots, why was it just a 3-point lead with 3:12 to play?

ANSWER ONE: Michigan State’s biggest issues through the first 30 minutes of the game were guarding Minnesota’s quick, tricky ball-screen plays. Minnesota's big 6-foot-4 point guard (Payton Willis) and their skillful 6-foot-7 stretch four (Jamison Battle) were a tough cover.

Meanwhile, Bingham was losing the interior sumo match with Curry. And there were concerns about leaving Bingham on the perimeter to guard Minnesota’s driving big men.

Battle tried to drive against Bingham on the second possession of the second half, but Bingham did a good job cutting off the drive, contesting the shot, forcing a miss and getting the defensive rebound.

But that was :45 seconds into the second half. Bingham’s endurance is still a question mark. Could he keep providing defense like that off the dribble when Minnesota isolated him?

A few moments later, Curry backed Bingham down and hit a counter lefty hook over Bingham to cut MSU’s lead to 36-35.

Bingham took a rest and then re-entered with 12:20 left and Michigan State up 51-45. Coming out of a time out, Michigan State went straight to Bingham in the post. He tried to back Curry down, but didn’t get him to budge. Bingham pumped, countered and missed a step-through.

With 10:26 left in a tie game, Bingham briefly grabbed a defensive rebound. But Curry jarred it loose for a strip.

Izzo puts chief importance on his centers owning rebounds more forcefully than that. Especially in the second half of tied Big Ten game.

A few seconds later, Curry drove against Bingham, bulled into him, got to the rim, and drew a foul on Bingham.

Curry made both free throws to give Minnesota its first lead at 52-51 with 10:14 left. Bingham was taken out of the game right then, and didn’t go back in.

Bingham wasn’t bad. He was just good enough to lose through the first 30 minutes.

Michigan State went with Hall and Hauser, to offer quicker feet and better switching capability versus those Minnesota ball screens.

It’s not like Hauser is a lot quicker than Bingham. In some ways he’s not quicker at all. But Hauser is smart with his angles and pack line positioning. Maybe he could have a little more success muscling Curry.

If Hauser had faltered, Bingham (or Julius Marble) would have been right back in there. But he didn’t.

After the game, Izzo said he didn’t like the way Bingham was losing the physical battles.

“I thought Curry hurt us,” Izzo said. “He took two dribbles and he had Markie under the basket. Markie hasn’t been playing like that, so I don’t know what the deal was.

“We decided to we were going inside to Markie but he started getting pushed out,” Izzi said. “I give Markie a lot of credit. He passed up a couple of 3s when it was the right time to do that. But he is really good in the post; he has a great jump hook and he is just not using it right now. So we have to do a better job of that.

“If there was another area that I thought we were really poor, our bigs did not set good screens.”

Bingham finished with six points and two rebounds in just 17 minutes of playing time.

Curry had 19 points on 8-of-12 shooting with seven rebounds.

“They (Minnesota) were more physical,” Izzo said. “We won the game but they played their tail off.”

As for Walker, he abruptly went from red hot to mistake-prone.

MOMENTS THAT MATTERED II

Walker scored on three straight possessions in dazzling fashion:

* He used a flipped drag screen by Bingham to find room for a finger roll and a 46-40 lead. This was right after Gabe Brown’s steal and flagrant foul free throws.

This looked like it was going to be the turning point, but Minnesota kept punching back.

* Walker made it 48-45 with a smart pull-up from 16 feet over a Minnesota big man after a switch.

He looked like a crafty, brainy, killer point guard on that play. Defense switched. Minnesota put a big on him. He had a little bit of room. Step back, bullseye.

* Walker then hit a 3-pointer off a drive-and-kick from Jaden Akins to make it 51-45.

That was 7 straight points by Walker. The 3-pointer rocked Breslin and Minnesota called time out.

After the time out, Walker committed turnovers on three straight possessions.

One was a failed drive-and-kick. Another was an intercepted handoff. The third was a botched lob toward Bingham which hit the rim and bounced over the backboard.

He motioned to Izzo like he wanted to come out. Hoggard was already headed in.

“I thought Tyson had about five minutes of his best basketball and then a couple of minutes of turnovers,” Izzo said. “He lets things bother him. He said, ‘I’m mad at myself. I let him drive me.’ That’s a good sign. We have to work through that. He’ll get better.”

Izzo is trying to be vigilant about this turnover thing. He is yelling less in games this year than usual, for some reason. I haven’t asked him why yet, but I will at some point.

Yelling probably isn’t a deterrent to turnovers. But Izzo is trying to find that happy median between racehorse speed and a controlled gallop.

Hoggard happened to be playing with good control on this night. He finished with six assists and only one turnover.

So, like a hot relief pitcher throwing strikes, Hoggard was given the ball and a chance to finish.

But offense was only half of Hoggard’s job. Izzo wanted the defensive flexibility to switch versus those troublesome Minnesota ball screens.

That meant Hoggard switching onto 6-foot-7 stretch four Battle on some occasions.

At 6-4, 210, Hoggard could defend Battle better than the slight, 6-foot Walker.

“We just had some lineups in that had to do some switching because they were killing us on those ball screens," Izzo said. "So we put a lineup in that defensively could cover it, and it worked okay.

"In fairness to Markie, we had to start switching those ball screens and that’s not something I wanted him to do so we put Malik in there to do that more, and Joey a little bit, not that he’s great at it. Those other guys (Hoggard, Hall, Hauser) played better defensively in the half-court set. That was the problem."

ANSWER TWO: As for the Gophers, they almost matched MSU’s hot streak. Battle nailed a high-difficulty, step-back baseline jumper over Hauser from 17 feet to tie the game at 51-51.

Point guard Willis attacked Hall off the dribble after one of those switches. Hauser had to leave his man to help. Willis missed, but Hauser’s man, Curry, hit the put-back to cut the lead to 61-57.

“Everybody asks why we were such a good rebounding team when we had Bell and Cleaves,” Izzo said. “I said it’s because nobody every penetrated against us so nobody ever helped.

“We had seven blocked shots tonight and I think three or four of them the ball was loose and they got it and scored. Off of blocked shots! That’s where I was disappointed with our energy level. We didn’t mix it up enough and they did.

“I thought the game was almost lost with very average ball screen defense and below average rebounding and loose balls that led to second-chance points for them."

And Minnesota ran some good old fashioned ball plays too.

The 3-pointer that Battle hit after a time out to cut the lead to 63-60 with 4:53 to go was sophisticated stuff. From a sideline in-bound play, they ran pinch post, split action, rescreen, pin and replace. All quick, with three precise passes. They hadn't done that type of thing all night.

I don't need to diagram it or define those terms. Just know that it was efficent, it was hard to cover, and it resulted in Battle hitting a 3-pointer off the dribble over Hauser.

You might look at Minnesota’s 1-4 Big Ten record, with a first-year head coach and a bunch of transfer players, and assume on paper that they are a bottom-third Big Ten team. That might end up being true, but they played some excellent basketball at times in this game, and that play, and the shot-maker coming through to finish it, was impressive.

Next possession, Curry backed Hauser down and hit a jump hook over him, cutting the lead to 65-62.

Next possession, E.J. Stephens drove past Gabe Brown and hit a runner in the lane to cut it to 65-64.

“I was impressed with Stephens tonight,” Izzo said. “He just drove it on us.

“As coaches, we have to look at some of the coverages. We thought we could do some things with the bigs and we tried it, so the guards looked worse than they are. We will have to change the ball screen (defense). They screened with Battle a lot and he is a great pick-and-pop guy.”

THE GAME-WINNER

Izzo ripped on himself after the game for drawing up a play that didn’t work, and credited his players for freelancing to get Hauser open for the game-winning lay-up.

Izzo shouldn’t be so hard on himself. The play he chose had merit.

Michigan State ran the same type of play that the Spartans ran which sprang Hall open for his lone 3-pointer of the night, the 3-pointer mentioned earlier which fueled a 7-for-9 hot streak for the Spartans.

This time, they had Brown in Hall’s place. Brown was supposed to pop open at the top of the key to take the shot Hall had made earlier.

At the beginning of the play, Hauser and Brown are up top, near one another. Hauser is at the top of the key to set a ball screen for Hoggard. Brown is in the circle.

Hauser set a ball screen for Hoggard.

And then Brown set a back screen for Hauser. Hauser rolls hard to the rim as part of the “Spain ball screen,” an adaptation that Spanish pro and international teams have had success with in recent years.

After setting the screen, Brown then cut to the top of the key as the replace man, hoping to be open for a 3-point attempt.

But 6-foot-4 Luke Loewe, a senior transfer from William & Mary, was in Brown’s jock all night. He denied the passing lanes for Brown throughout the game, and Michigan State was never able to make the Gophers pay with back-door pressure releases to Brown.

Louwe trailed Brown tightly on this play and Brown didn't get open.

Minnesota smartly came out of the time out with 6-foot-5 wing Sean Sutherlin guarding Hoggard. They did this anticipating a ball screen, figuring that Sutherlin could switch onto the screener.

And that’s exactly what happened.

When Hauser set the screen, Minnesota coach Ben Johnson, who is doing a fabulous job this year with the Gophers, could be heard yelling “Switch! Switch! Switch!”

Sutherlin switched onto Hauser. (And point guard Willis switched onto Hoggard).

The Suthlerlin switch onto Hauser made it easier for Sutherlin and the Gophers to cover Hauser on the Spain roll, rather than trying to hedge and fight back through traffic.

Up top, Louwe had Brown covered.

Hoggard did a good job of deciding not to force a pass to either of them.

Hoggard passed to Christie in the corner.

Now, Sutherlin was guarding Hauser in the post. Hauser had a size advantage, but Minnesota was willing to live with that and roll the dice. Sutherline fronted him. Hauser couldn’t get open.

Minnesota erred when Willis took his eye off of Hoggard and thought about helping toward Christie.

Willis failed with basic ball-you-man principles. He lost sight of his man (Hoggard) while becoming preoccupied with Christie.

Willis was out too high, too far beyond the 3-point line. There was no need to go that far out to cover Hoggard, and he erred further by losing sight of him.

Christie made a hard dribble and telegraphed for Hoggard to cut.

Hoggard cut into Willis’s blindspot and this was the beginning of the end for Minnesota.

Christie hit him in stride. Hoggard penetrated the lane. Sutherlin had to leave Hauser to help.

Hoggard delivered a dazzling, no-look, shovel dish to Hauser. That pass had some Earvin Johnson flair to it.

Hauser finished. And they all went nuts.



WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Michigan State found a way to win again, like they did against Northwestern, and Loyola, and Butler, and UConn.

Some of those teams were good. UConn was very good.

Better teams are waiting on the schedule. And Michigan State needs to reduce its lapses.

Meanwhile, it’s probably not a good thing that Izzo has a bit of a revolving door in terms of who is finishing games for him. But maybe the versatility will become a strength.

In terms of the point guard role late in games, he has never had a dual quarterback system (except for last year, which was not by design).

Let me rephrase that. Of Izzo's many good or great teams, none of them had a dual quarterback system.

The dual role has worked so far this year. He’s never had the type of size and defensive differences at the position that he has with Hoggard and Walker. So there is some flexible funtionality to it.

Walker is a good defender, but when Michigan State had a ball screen coverage crisis and had to simplify things with basic switches in this game, Izzo had the luxury of going to a bigger point guard.

Izzo dabbled once again with Christie as the point guard in the final minute, but those two possessions came up empty, including the time when Christie dribbled the ball off his foot.

There will be times in the future when the ball is in Christie's hands at the end of games, but that might not be the best option for this team in the near term.

Minnesota was good on this night. Michigan State was pretty good in some areas too. This was a good win for Michigan State, but Tom Izzo didn’t feel a sense of accomplishment when he had a brief confab with Roy Williams after the game.

“It’s kind of insane when I sit in the locker room with a guy who has won 1,000 games or whatever Roy has won and he had to remind me that we’re 14-2,” Izzo said. “I can’t forget that. But I do know what’s coming up and I now where we are in my mind and that’s all I care about. No one knows what I know and we have to get better and we have to get more physical. So we are going to do that.

“We have a lot of work to do as a staff. That will give me something to do tonight.”

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