WATCH: Everything Michigan State's Tom Izzo Said After Loss to USC
No. 7 Michigan State suffered just its third loss of the season on Saturday as USC defeated the Spartans, 70-64, in the first game of Michigan State's two-game trip to the West Coast.
The Spartans were never able to gain an edge but put up an admirable fight throughout. But the Trojans had the better performance, and ultimately, Michigan State's 13-game win streak concluded, as did its undefeated record in Big Ten play.
Spartans coach Tom Izzo addressed the media after the loss.
You can watch below:
Below is a transcript from Izzo's opening statement:
Izzo: "I had an assistant that said, ‘What starts bad, ends bad.’ And the start was atrocious. Wanted to go inside right off the bat. Turned the ball over twice. We took a couple of bad shots, I think it was 9-3, and I think we only had one shot. And then, we got down 21-27, and give our guys credit, they bounced back, but USC played better than us. I thought the biggest things that happened in the game -- we got punched in the mouth. That doesn't happen to us very often, and I don't know if we responded very well. Then, before half we did a little better job. But when you don't take care of the boards like we did, even though we outrebounded them by 1 -- that's kind of a facade, they had a couple of times when they had three or four rebounds in a row and scored both times, one on the 3 and one on the 3-point play. And then, uncharacteristically, we shot poorly from the free-throw line, which we’re an 83% free-throw shooting team. And what did we end up shooting? 57% or something. Had a couple of those goofy turnovers, and that's usually the difference in the game. But give credit to USC, they played well. And I’ve been waiting to see how we would respond under some adversity, and today, we didn’t respond very well, so we’ll have to fix that quickly since we have another game coming up.”
Michigan State will stay in Los Angeles, where it will take on UCLA at Pauley Pavilion on Tuesday.
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