Thank for writing exactly what I’ve been thinking for a long time. At some point, you have to let players learn from mistakes, approach them to break down the whats and hows and the whys of those mistakes after you are both cooled down. Lucas needs some degree of liberty. He is the only one with the ability and the willingness to make his own plays. I always appreciate that Izzo doesn’t let his top players run amok and do their own thing like so many other top D-I coaches seem to do, but hanging on to every single mistake also seems too much.

I also agree with witless chum, MSU needed to get away from fixating on getting Neitzel shots. Given the way things were going at the beginning of this year, it didn’t seem like this particular team needed it. The team seemed to be going in a direction where it was progressing beyond just Neitzel. I appreciate everything he’s done and does in his four years, but this year isn’t the same as last where he was the most gifted player on the team. The focus not being on him seemed to work well throughout the non-conference season, and it seemed to be leading to a natural transition to the next generation by year end.

Skippy, I’m new to the site (love it, by the way) so I don’t know if you’re a regular just being sarcastic or a troll (regular or not) too dumb argued with. In either case, I’m happy because it means your comment needs no further response.

Football or basketball if you go into the contest expecting them to lose like the always do, there is no dissapointment.

Occasionally the other teams loses, I can’t remember the last time a Spartan team went out and won a big game.

Hubert, I think Izzo probably is fairly Knight-like in how he runs practices. I don’t think he’s very Knight-like in terms of (1) an ability to connect with players off the court and (2) his treatment of people outside the team (media, other coaches, fans, administrators, etc.).

As for 3-point shooting as the primary problem last night, I think our perspectives actually fit together. Because the offense wasn’t playing aggressively, we didn’t get clean looks at 3-pointers playing from the inside out. All of the looks were forced because nothing else was available. Lucas is a good shooter when he’s set. And Allen can certainly fill it up when he’s in rhythm.

This is related to Witless Chum’s point about running the offense around Neitzel. At some point, Neitzel needs to get some looks off something other than a set play–penetration and kick out, finding the open man off double teams, etc. This side of J.J. Reddick, you can’t expect a shooter to score consistently when the other team knows he’s your primary option. It was a miracle Neitzel did it as consistently as he did last year.

Allen from 3 this year: 25-71 .352
MoJo from 3 last year: 42-116 .362

Shows you what I know.

What seems like Izzo’s mistake to me is continuing to run the offense with an eye toward getting Neitzel shots. It hasn’t worked against better competition this year. Maybe you don’t change the whole O, but it was very frustrating because earlier I was thinking ‘Well, if they jsut didn’t turn the ball over, they’d be very good.’ Not so much.

Kj touched earlier on making Lucas the focal point and I think we could do more with our bigs/Raymar Morgan, but really Neitzel and Morgan are the best options. If they both don’t get it done on the offensive end against a good team, we’ll lose.

Raymar is a guy who makes we want to buy into toughness, in that he seems to get flustered when things don’t go right. And he does the occasional insane thing.

On the other hand, Izzo players have typically responded to this approach — from Peterson to Anderson, Ager to Davis, these were players Izzo made better, and by the end of their careers, they played well in the big games, even if clearly, they did not always perform miracles. I can remember teams not playing good defense (ie 2006), or players having odd slumps (Hill in 2005), but this team is the first I can remember that really seems to play scared in these away games.

On the other hand, I think you are falling prey to the same kitchen psychology as those who go on and on about “toughness”. The real problem last night, once again, was that when Neitzel is cold, we really struggle from the outside. Outside shooting is Lucas’ weakness, Allen is no better than Mojo was last year, Walton is more and more unwilling to take a three pointer at all, and the woeful offensive limits of our big guys, none of whom has any kind of range, means the other team can focus on Neitzel and pack it in, and never pay the cost. The team was fine yesterday, played some great defense, but they could not make a shot, and by the end of the second half noone wanted to take a shot. The fact is that if Neitzel was playing the point and we had a Shannon Brown or Maurice Ager at the 2, these games would all have been wins.