Couch: Michigan State, it turns out, never became the team we thought it might be

DETROIT — Of all the years that have felt like Tom Izzo's next best chance at a second national championship, this one, by the end, didn't really.

Sunday's 55-53 loss to Syracuse in the second round of the NCAA tournament will sting for a while because it's the end — of Miles Bridges, of Jaren Jackson Jr., of Tum Tum Nairn, of a group of kids that elevated the program's culture and made coming to work every day worth it for Izzo and Co.

Same for Sunday.

“The effort was there all day,” Izzo said. “This time the skill let us down a little bit.”

Izzo’s most gifted team, it turned out, wasn’t close to his best. 

The Spartans would have survived Syracuse’s filthy zone with a normal shooting day. But at some point, this group was likely to run into a matchup that confounded them — be it Duke or Michigan’s Moritz Wagner or something or someone that required skill and dexterity these Spartans didn’t have.

They had a chance at a national championship. But it was a slim chance. Slimmer than two years ago or four years ago or eight years ago.

This was a nice group of kids, fairly mature and respectful even in the face of intense on-court expectations and off-court turmoil.

Right up to their final hour together.

“Even though this feels like a tough loss and feels like it’s the end of the world, it’s not,” Joshua Langford said, after missing 11 of 12 shots. “A lot of people are facing things that are much tougher in their life right now as I speak.”

No question. Good perspective. That might wind up being the strength of this group. It wasn’t supposed to be their legacy.

On the court, more was expected when Bridges sat a few feet from the Sparty statue last spring and declared he was coming back. The idea was to win a national championship.

“I was just trying to speak things into existence. It couldn’t happen,” Bridges said, choking up.

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MSU fell short to an 11 seed in front of a partisan crowd at Little Caesars Arena in large part because its worst shooting day of the season fell on the wrong day — 17-for-66 from the floor, 8-for-37 from 3. Some of that is chance. Horrible luck. Some of it was Syracuse’s zone. Some of it is MSU didn’t have another way.

“It’s suffocating,” Bridges said. “It frustrates you. And it wears you down if you can’t get good shots.”

“You can’t really completely prepare for it,” Jackson added. “It’s a Syracuse zone. It’s not really a 2-3 or 3-2. It’s something different. I had heard about it. I didn’t really know.”

MSU tried to beat it with outside shooting, by working the zone’s soft spot in the high post, by probing and attacking the baselines. The Spartans never seemed to have the perfect answer. Other than to keep shooting and rebound the heck out of the ball — 29 times on the offensive glass. 

“I think the heart was there,” Izzo said.

Just not the skill. Not yet. Perhaps Bridges and Jackson a year from now would have fared better. Jackson, in time, will be the perfect player with which to attack a zone. He’ll be in the NBA then. He’s done facing zones. Same for Bridges, who wouldn’t say he was leaving for the NBA but spoke with a sense of finality. 

Sophomore center Nick Ward said the loss was too fresh to think about the NBA. If he’s smart, he’s not done seeing zone defenses.

Ward rocked on the bench back and forth, covering his face as the buzzer sounded. What was he thinking?

“I wish we could have done those plays over and got a second chance at things,” he said.

I don’t think Izzo and his staff got everything out of this team. I think they were still figuring it out. This team was still evolving — especially Bridges, Jackson and Xavier Tillman.

MSU has five players who would start for almost every team in college basketball. And yet, as a quintet, they weren’t complete. That made them frustrating. Bridges took over Friday night against Bucknell and then couldn’t do the same against Syracuse. 

Like Denzel Valentine two years ago against Middle Tennessee State, Bridges reached a point when he knew MSU was in trouble. His realization came late — a tough shot by Tyus Battle over Langford with 47 seconds left to put Syracuse ahead 52-49.

“I felt like it was time to tie this thing up.” Bridges said.

He missed two 3-pointers on the next two possessions, the last shots of his MSU career, ending a 4-for-18 day. An hour later, he looked like a 19-year-old kid again, resting his head on the shoulders of his mother and sister courtside.

“Make sure talk radio and Twitter and everything else puts on me and not on him,” Izzo said. “Because if anyone puts in on him, there’s going to be a problem. 

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Don’t worry, Tom. It’s three straight years now MSU has failed to get out of the NCAA tournament’s first weekend, twice with teams that should have. That deserves introspection from Izzo. This felt like one where a coach lost a chess match. Izzo also didn’t quite have all the components we thought he would when the season began. This team was better on paper than it usually was in person.

“We all knew the ability that we had,” Langford had. “We knew we had the full team and had all the pieces to be able to win a national championship.”

The season’s final result says otherwise.

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/Graham_Couch.