Tom Izzo updates Malik Hall's status: 'Preliminary stuff does not look great'
Michigan State suffered a heart-breaking 64-63 loss to No. 3 Purdue on Monday afternoon and, to make matters worse, it sounds like head coach Tom Izzo will be without one of his best players for the immediate future.
“It looks like he’s going to be out for a while, maybe a long while,” Izzo said on his pre-game radio show prior to tipoff against the Boilermakers. “The preliminary stuff did not look great. Just one of those bad breaks, and we’ll see what happens.”
Following the game, Izzo was asked if he felt any extra pride in his team for their effort against Purdue, despite one of their best players sidelined.
“We were trying to win the game for him, because he’s crushed," Izzo said. “I appreciate that Malik handled it so well, and we still don’t know exactly what’s going on, so you all know," the head coach said. "We're not holding anything back. We knew he wasn’t going to play today, but the specialist just looked at it today...Nothing looks good for the immediate future, but if it’s the whole year, we don’t know.”
Michigan State was already thin at the forward position coming into this season, and Hall's injuries have sapped the Spartans of any semblance of depth at power forward. Graduate senior Joey Hauser has been leaned on heavily in MSU's last three games, playing more than 35 minutes per game.
Izzo expressed frustration at unnamed members of his roster when he was asked about spreading minutes around more in the absence of Hall.
“If I had other guys who I thought were good enough to play, I would have played them," Izzo said. "Maybe some other guys have to work a little harder to get a little better. Or, when they had to work hard, or they had their opportunities, they didn’t take advantage of it. And then, ‘Shazam’, something happens and you didn’t put yourself in that position.”
The road ahead won't make things any easier on Michigan State, as the Spartans are scheduled to host No. 23 Rutgers on Thursday before a Sunday road trip to Indiana on Sunday.
“That is tough. We’re going to have to deal with that," Izzo said of the limited depth at forward. "Joey can’t play 38 minutes and he’s done it three games in a row now. Of all the positions, that’s the one that’s the most delicate right now.”
Readers can view the entirety of Tom Izzo's postgame remarks concerning Malik Hall in the video below:
