Finals are over, Oakland is on deck, and Michigan State’s Sunday practice was scheduled for 10:00 a.m.
Until Malik Hall made a request to push it back a bit.
Tom Izzo wasn’t about to change it when Hall first asked him to. Izzo figured Hall wanted to go out Saturday night and sleep in Sunday morning, so he told him – half-jokingly – that he might make practice at 9:00 a.m. instead.
But that wasn’t why Hall was asking; he and some of the other players wanted to watch the World Cup final between Argentina and France.
“You wanna watch that?” Izzo said. “Fine, we’ll put it on the big screen, and we’ll make practice at 12.”
Sunday morning rolls around and the entire MSU men’s basketball team is watching it in the Breslin center practice gym on the gigantic screen on the side wall – looks to be about 25 feet wide by 15 feet tall to this untrained eye.
A couple of the Spartan basketball players were so into the game, they took some pads out and were lying down like it was a movie night.
You might not know it, but several guys on the team – Hall, Davis Smith, Carson Cooper, Jaden Akins – are big soccer fans.
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Practice was supposed to start at noon, but as the game went into late regulation, the coaches – who were watching from the balcony – saw how the guys were reacting to the equalizing goals from France, and the late chances from both teams. At one point there was a significant scoring opportunity and every player in the gym jumped up, reacting to the excitement.
When the game went to overtime, Izzo and the coaches looked at each other and decided, “we gotta let them finish watching this.” So they did.
“It was an incredible ending and it was really neat to watch our guys,” Izzo said. “It was worth moving practice back although I ended up moving it back to almost one o'clock because of all the things that happened – but it was really worth it. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed watching [his players] more than I enjoyed the game.”
“I’m not a huge soccer fan,” Joey Hauser said. “But when the World Cup is on, I’m definitely going to watch. It was an iconic game. It was an unbelievable game. I was kinda rooting for France, but Messi is the greatest of all time so to see him win was awesome.”
“It was fun,” A.J. Hoggard said. “I’m not really a big soccer guy, but it was a little camaraderie as a team; we took a lot out of it as well, watching France overcome adversity and fight back – so it can help us as a team as well.”
“We had a lot of guys that got excited,” Hauser said. “Guys were running around the court – we had it up on the big screen there – so there were a lot of guys running around. I think everyone was cheering for Argentina.”
“We are a very close-knit team, we do things like that all the time together,” Hoggard said. “Coach [Izzo] got to see it first hand, and we also got to take some things away from the game, so it was good.”
Of course Izzo took the opportunity to use it as a teaching tool.
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“So I said, ‘Did you see the emotion, the way those guys handled it, the joy of some, and the sorrow of others?’” Izzo said. “I said, you know, ‘You have to learn and see what championship events are like; if you ever want to play in one, you've got to see what it's all about.’ I got my two cents out of it. It was worth moving practice back.”
Eventually the game ended, Argentina finished off France, and the players went into their prep session for Oakland, whose team visits Breslin Center Wednesday night. Greg Kampe’s team has played Tom Izzo’s team nearly every year since 1999, missing only 2002, 2003 and 2011. The Spartans are 19-0 in the series, in which the largest margin of victory was 36 points in 2000 and the smallest margin of victory was one point in 2010.
It's been mostly practice for the Spartans these days, having not played a game since a victory over Brown on Dec. 10. During this extended break, the Spartans have been able to work on themselves in practice.
Izzo purposefully didn’t go two-a-days during this time; he did go just about every day, though, except for a couple during finals. This is what they were missing, he said. The timing. The ability to slow things down. The opportunity to work on the Spartans.
Hoggard and Hauser agreed.
“This break came at the right time for us,” Hoggard said. “It’s a good time to gel as a team. Continue to build on the things that we did well in the last two games. Continue that confidence over; it helps the body, helps the team improve in every aspect, especially our individual games.”
“Before we had this little break, everything had been focused on different opponents,” Hauser said on Monday night. “This past week has been focusing on ourselves. They’ve been long, they’re never easy, but it’s a lot better than traveling. We definitely needed this mental reset.
“We’ve been on the move, on the go,” Hauser added. “We really had some time to relax. Get some time to get back to the basics with [my] shot – get some individual work in. MSU vs. Oakland has always been a great game. They’re going to come in – they know us, they’re going to have a scheme for us. We’ll have to play well.”
A big goal for the Spartans in Hoggard's eyes for Wednesday’s game versus Oakland is being consistent.
“Not taking our foot off the gas when we make a run,” Hoggard said. “If we happen to be on the other side of the run, not drop our head, continue to battle adversity.”
That’s something this team just might have picked up from watching the World Cup.
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