The Spartans dropped the first of their two-leg West Coast trip to the now 13-8 USC Trojans Saturday afternoon in a game that, for the Spartans, started a bit sluggish.
“What starts bad, ends bad," said Tom Izzo, as he opened his postgame press conference.
The 22-7 deficit MSU faced at the 12:41 mark in the first half proved to be too big of a hole to climb out of for the No. 7 Spartans.
“It was a couple of bad shots – a couple of those turnovers, that's really the difference," Izzo said regarding the early moments of the game.
This team had notably opened the Big Ten season undefeated, and many wondered if this West Coast trip would be where the Spartans finally dusted off the loss column.
“I’ve been waiting to see how we respond to some adversity,” Izzo said. "And today we didn't respond very well. So we'll have to fix that quickly since we have another game coming up.”