You know it’s a bad night . . .
Posted by kj on Friday, March 28th, 2008
. . . when your team goes on a 17-0 run and the needle on the odds-of-winning-the-game meter barely budges from zero.
The stats for the full game don’t have a lot of meaning in a game like this one, so I’m not going to a do a full breakdown. It’s how the game started that put this one out of reach almost from the start. Nearly everything that could have gone wrong for MSU did go wrong in the first half:
- Memphis hit 4 of their first 6 three-pointers to pull MSU out of their attempts to play a combination of zone defense and sagging man-to-man. Memphis didn’t hit another 3-pointer the entire game, but it didn’t matter at that point.
- Memphis pulled down 8 of their first 10 offensive rebounding opportunities. They made MSU look completely overmatched physically, which is a tall task.
- Lucas made several bad decisions in pushing the ball in transition that led to easy baskets going the other way for Memphis.
- Even when MSU forced difficult shots, Memphis hit them. Rose and Douglas-Roberts both made a series of spectacular mid-range shots in the first half and combined to shoot 16-23 on 2-point attempts for the game. The dribble-drive offense is fairly unstoppable when players are hitting shots consistently even when they’re not getting all the way to the basket.
It’s disappointing how easily MSU seem to fold in the first half, but the way Memphis came out scoring the basketball, I really think there was no way the Spartans were going to keep up. Give the MSU players credit for fighting back to within shouting distance in the second half, but a lot of that, quite frankly, was Memphis easing off the gas pedal.
Other thoughts:
- Joey Dorsey sure is a class act, huh? His taunts of Neitzel ensure the Tigers are now the villain I will be rooting against through the remainder of the tournament.
- Is Goran Suton invisible? Packer offered up kudos to Allen for his 20-point performance throughout the second half–and deservedly so–but made almost no mention of Suton (23 points, 9 rebounds). Oh well, the refusal of the media to acknowledge the quality of his play at least provides a continuing rationale for the existence of this blog.
- 26-35 (74.3%) from the free throw line for the Tigers. None of them were pressure shots, but their strokes looked fine to me.
- If Morgan was still thinking at all about leaving for the NBA, this game should confirm he’s got some work to do on his game to compete with players of similar size and athletic ability.
- Walton: zero points, 4 fouls. He has a lot of work to this offseason to regain at least a basic level of offensive confidence.
- 69-possession game. I think that number’s inflated by the fouls at the end. And an up-tempo game doesn’t help too much when you’re taking the ball out from under your basket, rather than making outlet passes off defensive rebounds.
It hurt to watch Neitzel’s career end on a game in which he struggled so badly against the stellar defense of Antonio Anderson. Give him credit, though, for staying within the offense right up until the end tonight; he finished with 7 assists.
Hopefully, the memory of this game fades and he’s remembered as he should be–as the player who put a team on his back for a season and kept MSU’s NCAA Tournament appearance streak alive. We Spartan faithful owe you an undying debt of gratitude, #11.
I’ll wait a few days to make any judgments about this season as a whole, but tonight’s loss was certainly a disappointing punctuation mark to it.
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Filed in game recap, michigan state basketball
DMPon 29 Mar 2008 at 1:25 am 1The way the ball rolled in the first half, not sure what could have been done. We’ve seen this before: a wildly disappointing letdown where things fall apart quickly. I didn’t have to have gone that way, as the second half showed (with all the qualifiers - foot off the pedal, Rose out a good amount of time, etc), but it just so happened that everything Memphis threw up in the first half went in. I thought Izzo should have just continued to roll the dice with the Summers-Allen-Lucas back-court that got the run going in the second half (again, with qualifiers). I thought the situation called for desperate measures, and it seemed that desperate measure had potential at that particular point in time. It was clear that Walton was not going to be able to contribute in this game and should have not come back in at all. I’m also not sure why Izzo waited until 2-3 minutes to go for the hack-a-Tiger. That was another desperate measure that could have born some fruit, especially every time Taggart touched the ball. The team FT% is skewed because Douglas-Roberts had a great night on the line.
The worst fears of the bigger Memphis guards against the the <6′ trio for State came true, but the lopsidedness of the result is still aberrant. My god is Rose good, and my god is Dorsey an ass. Doesn’t that stuff earn you technical fouls?
I was at least happy to see Allen play liberated like few times this season. Hopefully this turns the light on for him. Hopefully this also turns the light on for Lucas on the importance of picking when to take chances. Hopefully Suton doesn’t look back and brings it strong next year the way he has the last several games. I think it’s looking good for the next couple of years. But that’s a topic for later when I’m not so depressed.
It was rough for Neitzel to go out that way, but for a guy who is not tall enough or fast enough, he will be able to say he did the best he could, played with intelligence, lead with integrity, cared deeply, handled difficult situations, carried teams, and was successful.
huberton 29 Mar 2008 at 3:26 pm 2Wow, what a sad way to end the season. And yet, there is something predictable and unsurprising, about this team, which laid more eggs than any Izzo team this decade, during the course of the season.
DMP — you’re exactly right about Neitzel. It’s hard to not love the little guy, but games like last nights’ revealed the talent gap. 5′10 and no first step just won’t cut it at the top level, particularly for a shooting guard. Neitzel at the point, with a 6′5 shooter at the 2, would have been another story, as Neitzel would have been expected to get ten points a night, 6-8 assists, and run the team.
KJ, as you consider your end of the season review, ponder the following, please:
What went wrong this year? Did we just all overestimate the talent level, particularly after the great start in November? Was there a problem of chemistry?
Why is MSU and the Big Ten unable to get these supremely athletic players that the top teams seem to get?
will the level of athleticism improve next year?
who will improve the most of the returning players?
Will Suton be a star?
Adamon 29 Mar 2008 at 4:30 pm 3You know it’s a bad night when:
It’s not even halftime yet, and you’ve already lost.
Spartalyticalon 31 Mar 2008 at 7:59 am 4I don’t remember the last time I wanted to throw up as a result of a college basketball game.
If there was any legitimate hope of pulling off what would have been a significant upset, it was dashed before the 10 minute mark of the first half. I think it could have happened had the stars been aligned. But with the slightest misalignment, let alone the the sky falling like we saw Saturday night, there was nothing doing.
While I still feel Memphis is the weakest No. 1 seed in this year’s tournament, and should go down to UCLA, I’m more of a believer in Calipari’s team having seen them the last two weeks. They are very athletic, but so are a lot of other teams out there. What they have is size with that athleticism and talent. Neitzel wasn’t just firing blanks, as that idiot Sharp points out. Anderson was matching him step for step all night long, with an additional six inches over him to boot. His defense was amazing because of his speed/size combination. It was only after Anderson had left the game that Drew hit his two shots.
I agree that no one was giving any love to Suton, who was having just as good a game as Allen. Those two were carrying the team Saturday, and were able to do enough in the second half to regain a margin of the respect that was lost on this group in the first half. It could have gotten interesting if the game had been another 10 minutes longer, or had the halftime decifit been only 20. Memphis was completely asleep in the second half. They were lazy down the stretch of the Mississippi State game too. Even at times in yesterday’s Texas win. I really think they’re going down Saturday against UCLA, which has the size inside and outside to match up with the Tigers, and has been through the fire in the Pac 10 all year. Regardless, this team was far, far better than our Spartans. We looked ill-prepared and lost at times, but the sting is lessened to me because of the dramatic mismatch.
That said, this has been the first I’ve paid meaningful attention to the Tigers, ever. I saw portions of three games earlier this year (unimpressive win against Gonzaga at home, nearly coughing it up to UAB on the road, and losing to Tennessee at home). I’m not sure what the free throw issue is. They’re under 60% on the year, but they shot very well against us and Texas, and no one looks to have terribly awkward form. The dribble drive offense looks pretty slick, and they’ve got the weapons to exploit all sorts of mismatches with their aforementioned size/speed combo.
However, this program took a big step backward with regard to class and respect, this last week and weekend. Before, I was fairly indifferent. A good team in a lousy conference is always going to look a ton better than they are. Next. But hearing all week from Calapari about how no one thinks they’re any good and how free throws will be their undoing and no one respecting what they have, with a chip on his shoulder the size of Graceland, I grew tired of it. After yesterday’s win, how many times did he tell Billy Packer how good his team was? How many times did he offer up that keen insight during press conferences this week? John, you played more than well enough this week to shut the critics up, but you can’t just leave it at that, can you? How many times did Izzo pop off cocky remarks like that from 1999-2001? How many times do you hear Roy Williams or Coach K. or other big time coaches lauding themselves like that? He insists timeless greatness is implied by their 100+ wins in three seasons, just like other great teams of the past. Other great teams who haven’t bowed out prematurely in the tournament, that is (this year still pending, obviously). And how many times would Izzo or any other respectable coach put up with antics such as Dorsey’s Saturday night? Marquise Gray does so much as frown after a dunk and Izzo’s got him by the collar and on the bench.
This team, while a very good team, has even more of a sense of entitlement when they’ve get to go the distance and prove a thing. Maybe they’re in the process of doing that right now, as once again, I recognize them more today as a very good basketball team than I did just weeks ago. And maybe, in time, they’ll become the program that they already think they are.