OVERHEARD IN THE MICHIGAN STATE LOCKER ROOM: SPARTANS LAMENT ‘MISERABLE’ TURNOVERS IN RUTGERS LOSS

NEW YORK – Michigan State outrebounded Rutgers by 10 and held the Scarlet Knights to 37.5 percent shooting and 3-for-16 from 3-point range.

That put the Spartans in position to potentially snag a critical conference win. But turnovers and a sputtering offense ultimately cost Michigan State in a 61-55 loss on Saturday at Madison Square Garden.

Here are some notable quotes from Tom Izzo and Michigan State players following the game:

“I think we’re still the work-in-progress we’ve been all year.”

— Izzo on his team

“I thought we did a miserable job turning the ball over. My point guards did not do a very good job.”

— Izzo on Michigan State’s 14-turnover performance

“Tyson Walker, we needed to get him more shots. Easier said than done. But I thought defensively, offensively, just his whole demeanor in the game, he was one guy that I thought was in it the whole time. If I was giving out a hockey star he’d get one, two and three. He’d get all of them.”

— Izzo on Walker’s 12-point performance on 5-for-10 shooting with no turnovers

”He gets tired and he goes south. I told him that…That extra time is really detrimental to A.J., if you ask me. We’ve got to get him back down to maybe 25, 26 minutes somehow.”

— Izzo on point guard A.J. Hoggard, who had five turnovers

“No, not at all.”

— Hoggard on if fatigue was a factor in his turnovers

“I think we were getting clean shots at the beginning of the game. I think we got a lot of clean shots, we just didn’t knock them down. It happens.”

— Hoggard on Michigan State’s offense

“I feel like some of them were bad shots, on my behalf I forced some of them. But I feel like overall, we didn’t have many bad, bad ones.”

— Spartans forward Malik Hall, who shot 1-for-9 from the field

“They went to the same play every time. They went to a high ball screen with him and we couldn’t guard it. We struggled to defend it. Give them credit, they kept going to it and they knocked down their free throws late.”

— Joey Hauser on Rutgers’ Paul Mulcahy recording 15 points in the second half

“There’s not a pro guy, if you ask him where his favorite place to play is, it’s Madison Square Garden. And I told our guys that. You get a chance to play in the mecca of college basketball.”

— Izzo on playing at Madison Square Garden

2023-02-04T21:50:11Z dg43tfdfdgfd