With the Big Ten men’s basketball tournament underway, Michigan State Head Coach Tom Izzo is encouraging his team to play with ‘win or go home’ urgency against UCLA or Rutgers in the quarterfinal on Friday, March 13.
“The ‘my bads’ are out the door now,” said Izzo during a press conference. “They don’t matter anymore because once you ‘my bad’ you’re usually going home.”
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“One-and-done time is a lot different than the regular season.”
The Spartans are ranked No.3 in the Big Ten bracket, which earned them a bye through the first three days of the tournament.
Rutgers beat Minnesota 72-67 on Wednesday, March 11. The Scarlet Knights advance to play UCLA on Thursday, March 12. The winner of that game will play Michigan State the next day.
Izzo noted that UCLA, Minnesota, and Rutgers are all playing better than they were earlier in the season and stressed the challenge of preparing due to the uncertainty of who they’ll play.
“I think right now, UCLA is playing better than they were early in the year. I think Rutgers is playing better than they were at the beginning of the year and I think Minnesota playing pretty good.”
“It’s hard to talk about any team because I don’t know who we’ll play and I really don’t. The way Rutgers has been playing they’re going to give some people fits so we’re going to just worry about different things defensively that each team presents to us.”
Even though the Spartans have a bye and will be rested, Izzo is concerned that a team that played the night before can have a momentum advantage.
“I think the hardest part about this tournament now is when you get a bye, it’s always a worry because the team who played the night before usually has momentum if it’s one game.”
“We’ve had really good teams that got beat on the first night.”
Izzo is satisfied with where his team is as they head into tournament play but emphasized a need for more production from his bench players, especially since the team lost a critical rotational player in Divine Ugochukwu.
“I think we’re in a decent spot in where we’re going, I mean, down a little bit with Divine [Ugochukwu] out. Sometimes you’re starting to see that we’re wearing down a little bit. We got to do a little bit better job with that. I think Cam Ward is still going to be a very important part of moving forward for us and even Jesse [McCollough] some. We’ve got to get a little bit more play out of our bench and we’re going to try to work on that this week. We’ve had meetings with them and tried to make them realize how valuable and important they are in the near future.”
Izzo reflected on the team’s challenging regular season schedule and said it has prepared them for the Big Ten tournament and the NCAA Tournament.
“We played two seeds in Illinois, three seeds could be Purdue. I’m just saying those top four seeds, we’ll have played five or six or those teams.”
“We played three almost bonified, definite number one seeds (2x Michigan, Duke) and didn’t win any of them but I think learned a lot from each one of them and I think that’ll make us better as this tournament and the next tournament come around.”
The Spartans tip off against their eventual opponent on Friday, March 13 at 9:00 p.m.