- Peterson turned himself into an MSU legend
I had forgotten he had a redshirt year. - MoPete’s top five
Izzo: “OK, fine. But if you hit the tuba player with that pass, I’m going to kill you.” - Mateen Cleaves on The Huge Show: Kalin Lucas doing a ‘great’ job running Spartans
Haven’t had a chance to listen to this. - Illini Flying Under Radar
Hoopraker. - Illinois faces tough task at Michigan State
Bruce Weber: “Rebounding has been a question for us. We have to see if we can compete on the glass.” - ‘Horns Still In Running For Wilson
Nice breakdown on our only remaining 2009 target. Burnt Orange Nation pegs us as the leader.
The Spartans Weblog clan will be taking in today’s game from the upper reaches of the Breslin Center–just at the right elevation to get a good look at MoPete’s new banner. I expect the joint will be rockin’.
Go Green!
Marquise must have read my comments last game and came to play today.
Way too many unforced turnovers in the first half. Lucious is throwing the ball away, and everyone else is dragging the pivot foot and getting called for it.
Also, the announcers said that the ref who T’d up Izzo has now done that in four of the last five MSU games he’s called. Something isn’t right about that.
One word: Yikes.
Lucas is missing in action. We need our best player to be so.
Everyone looks uncomfortable. Illinois deserves a lot of credit for that-they are exceptional defensively.
Izzo must make adjustments quickly. I don’t see it in the cards today.
Does anyone have any explanation for the bizarre call that gave Illinois the ball back with 1 on the shot clock when we got a clean rebound? The only thing that makes even a little sense is that they called inadvertent whistle once they realized it wasn’t a shot-clock violation, and since it was a loose ball it went to the arrow – but then they should have had a fresh shot clock, not 1, because the shot hit rim. And since we had the rebound clean in the first place, the only “fair” thing to do is to give us the ball out-of-bounds because we had the ball when the inadvertent whistle was blown.
We had the same question.
I’ll take the win, but… yeesh. Everybody seemed to be a little rattled at times. Gray and Allen had a couple great plays that seemed to really swing the momentum, but nobody really seemed to be a consistent threat throughout. Good job by Izzo settling everyone down (himself included?) and overcoming a sloppy performance. Pray this serves as motivation for future adversity.
On the shot clock thing: Was the ruling that the inadvertent whistle occurred before the shot hit the rim? The TV guys didn’t have an explanation for the situation?
If we’d lost by a point or two, I can only imagine the angst there’d be about that call.
If we’d lost by a point or two, I’m not convinced the refs make it out of Breslin alive. (That’s probably exaggerating a bit, but not much.) I haven’t heard a crowd that angry since we booed the refs through an entire TV timeout (pausing only to cheer for the little kid shooting a couple layups) against Purdue a few years ago. (Seemed to be pretty effective, too – the refs immediately called four fouls in a row on Purdue. Much is made of coaches trying to work the refs to get calls; I think a good crowd can do the job too if you get them mad enough. And that crowd was pissed.)
The only thing I can think of is that they ruled inadvertent whistle before the shot. Which, to put it as kindly as possible, is utterly contrary to fact, as the whistle didn’t sound until well after the shot (in fact, I think it was in our guy’s hands before the whistle sounded – and if it wasn’t, it was about to be, with no Illinois player anywhere nearby).