Tom Izzo was only half-disappointed with his team following Monday’s 81-56 loss at Minnesota, but the bad half was so bad that the 26th-year head coach couldn't remember this type of wreckage.
"We never had a performance like this," he said of Michigan State's offensive struggles.
Izzo was fully disappointed with the offense, not quite as disappointed with the defense. But it all equated to failure for a third straight time in Big Ten play for the Spartans (6-3), who are at the bottom of the conference standings and soon will drop out of the Top 25.
“As hard as it is to believe, where we’ve been really poor has been defensively,” Izzo said, “and I thought we did just about everything we wanted to do defensively. I have no problem with our defense. It was our offense.”
Michigan State fell behind 9-0 and barely showed a threat of challenging the Gophers after the first 10 minutes as Minnesota’s lead stretched to 36-16 at halftime when Gopher guard Marcus Carr hit a 3-pointer at the intermission buzzer.
Michigan State shot a miserable 25 percent from the field (18 of 70), and managed only 12 offensive rebounds off of 52 missed shots (23 percent).
Michigan State had no second chance points or fastbreak points at halftime against the statistically-worst rebounding team in the Big Ten.
Minnesota out-rebounded the Spartans, 52-36.
Minnesota shot only 40 percent in the first half despite leading by 20. The Gophers shot 54 percent in the second half and ended up 47 percent for the game. But Izzo seemed intent to find something to build on for a team that is 0-3 in Big Ten play for the first time since the 2001-02 season.
“In general, we had open shots,” Izzo said. “Joey Hauser had open shots. Joshua Langford had open shots. I thought Gabe Brown had some open shots and we just missed shot after shot after shot.”
Michigan State was an astonishing 4-of-31 from the field at one point in falling behind 31-14. Michigan State was 6-of-38 from the field at halftime.
Aaron Henry led Michigan State with 11 points on 3-of-10 shooting. Izzo didn’t start Henry, but instead brought him off the bench in order to move Rocket Watts to the off guard for the outset of the game. Neither experiment worked.
Michigan State had no other players in double figures.
Watts had 2 points on 1-of-9 shooting, with a combination of misfired open shots and some ugly misses on forced shots.
Hauser, coming off a career-high 27 points against Wisconsin on Christmas Day, was 1-of-8 from the field (including 0-for-5 from 3-point range) for 6 points.
Freshman A.J. Hoggard had a career-high 9 points in a career-high 15 minutes.
Carr led Minnesota with 19 points, five below his average, on 7-of-13 shooting.
Minnesota center Liam Robbins was a difference-maker with 18 points on 7-of-11 shooting. He protected the rim against lane penetration and baseline drives.