Couch: Michigan State is anything but an NCAA tournament bubble team
DURHAM, N.C. – I don’t think Michigan State’s basketball players understand the reality of their situation.
They aren’t in trouble after their 78-69 loss at fourth-ranked Duke Tuesday night. They aren’t an NCAA tournament bubble team, even if sometimes they’ve played like it early this season. They haven’t dug themselves a hole, even if they think it.
“Now you’ve got to fight back a long ways,” senior Eron Harris said Tuesday night, after losses to Arizona, Kentucky, Baylor and Duke. “You don’t want to be in that position.”
“It’s really frustrating that we didn’t win any of these (marquee) games, because we needed these wins to get back in the top 25 or in the talk for the (NCAA) tournament,” freshman Miles Bridges said, unable to hide his disappointment about MSU’s next five games, all at home, all against mid- or low-major competition. “We’re just going to have to bust down and win a lot of games in Big Ten play.”
They will. They’re 4-4. They should be 9-4 entering Big Ten play and, given their early Big Ten slate, 14-4 in mid-January when they head to Ohio State (though Northwestern is looking like a decent test on Dec. 30).
MSU two years ago was more a bubble team than these guys, and that group wound up reaching the Final Four. That team didn’t have a player who could create his own shot — Denzel Valentine developed that skill the next season as a senior — or a reliable offensive post presence. It didn’t have any of the elements of basketball that allow for easy offense. This year’s team has all of them.
“We have it all,” MSU assistant coach Mike Garland said. “We just don’t know how to do the things that win.”
Garland, an old college basketball warhorse, sat stewing in a corner of MSU’s locker room at Cameron Indoor Stadium, frustrated by a process that can be painful to coach.
“We outplayed them. Look at our stats,” he said. “At this level, you can’t just win on talent. It’s setting screens, taking care of the ball … its doing the winning things.”
It’s not losing focus for two measly minutes on the road, at Duke, no less, which results in an 11-0 run the other way — a 48-48 game suddenly a lot less winnable at 59-48.
“Sometimes we lose focus,” junior point guard Tum Tum Nairn said. “We can’t lose focus in games like this.”
“Basically a minute and 30 (seconds) determined the whole game,” Bridges said. “We made a lot of dumb plays — we let them crash the glass, we didn’t do our assignments well for 1:30, and they got up by 10.”
MSU outshot Duke, 49 to 46 percent. It out-rebounded the Blue Devils, 39-33. Neither team shot well from beyond the arc. But MSU turned the ball over 18 times, many of them only semi-forced, resulting in 19 Duke points. That’s the difference. That and little things that MSU’s younger players don’t yet do consistently.
“We were worn out at the end,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “We’re just fortunate that we had the lead and our older guys know how to win when you’re tired.”
“I’ve got tough kids,” Krzyzewski continued. “I’ve got really tough kids, and they beat tough kids. I thought that was the best I’ve seen Michigan State play.”
It was another step for the Spartans in a season that was never going to be anything less than a wild ride.
MSU is trying to win with a rotation that features eight players in new roles — four true freshman, who combined to play 91 minutes Tuesday, and four others: Harris, Matt McQuaid, Kenny Goins and Kyle Ahrens, who’ve never before been asked to do what they’re being asked to do.
Harris, for example, played 31 minutes, took 11 shots and scored a team-high 14 points Tuesday. He’s in a go-to role, for better or worse for MSU. Tuesday, he hit big shots and made plays for his teammates. But he’s not at the level of Valentine or Draymond Green or even the best of Keith Appling, not at the point where he can carry a team against an elite opponent.
“It’s still kind of a thing where I’m getting into that role,” said Harris, who averaged 17 points per game as a sophomore for a West Virginia team that lost in the first round of the NIT. “It’s a little different. This is the highest level I’ve ever played at.”
This is a team evolving very publicly, though now headed for a healthy month off the radar. It needs the time at home. The practice time mostly. Time for Ward to work on how to handle double teams in the post, which are suddenly coming his way regularly. Time to let Josh Langford find his legs and rhythm and place. “I know I have so much more to offer,” Langford said Tuesday. Time to work with Bridges on how to counter defenses making everything he does difficult.
“We need a lot of practices,” said Bridges, who described himself as “nonexistent” Tuesday night after an 11-point, nine-rebound, three-turnover performance in which he made 4 of 13 shots while being defended by savvy Duke senior Matt Jones. “We haven’t had a lot of practice. I know Coach Izzo and all the assistants; they’ll get me some keys to (how to respond to) getting fronted and getting denied.”
Izzo Tuesday night sounded like a coach short on patience, unwilling to accept the reality of his roster. He isn’t finished with growing pains, though.
“I’m not going to deal with it,” he said. “(Nick’s) got to play better, Miles has to play better. Cassius, we have to quit turning it over. Yeah, those are all freshmen. But eight games in now, (they’ve) played a lot of minutes. It’s time to quit making excuses for the freshmen. They’ve got to start playing.”
That’s nonsense. Bravado for a press conference, maybe. They are playing. They’re figuring it out on the fly. They went toe-to-toe with a good Duke team in a brutal environment Tuesday — their first true road game of the year, which is strange to say for a squad that’s traveled 13,600 miles this month.
Ward and Winston made huge plays and boneheaded plays. Often within a matter of seconds.
The Spartans were frazzled by the momentum of a couple of possessions that didn’t go their way, including one egregious goaltending call at a pivotal time, and lost their poise for a couple minutes at a venue that’s gobbled up far more experienced teams. Duke’s seniors admitted smelling blood. “And then Cameron gets going,” Kzryzewski said of the famed arena.
“I’m disappointed that we kind of let an opportunity go,” Izzo said.
He’s disappointed because it was a real opportunity for a win at Duke. Bubble teams never have that opportunity. Neither do teams that wind up outside of the top 25 or in a massive hole, needing to be something more than they are to climb out of it.
The Spartans are fine. Give it six weeks. They’ll understand.
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.
NEXT GAME
MSU vs. Oral Roberts
When: 4:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Breslin Center, East Lansing
TV: Big Ten Network