It’s the eyebrows that make this video clip so much fun, IMO.
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I watched the highlights and there was one hilariously lucky shot on there. Also, KSU made some impressive long passes to players cutting on the baseline, like right under the hoop.
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the only shot I can recall that was truly lucky was that one Nowell three that may have been a poor alley oop pass
banked threes happen with pretty solid regularity
Izzo of course conveniently forgets to mention that it’s not a close game if Nowell doesn’t roll his ankle. K State was about to blow it open at that point.
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Citing abberant shooting performances is a classic Izzo crutch - he did it with Dug when we beat them, and called Bufkin’s dagger “a 1 in 100 shot”, but will obviously never mention his team shot 53% from three last night, etc.
He has two modes: if they lose despite him thinking they played generally well, he’ll cherry-pick the statistical anomolies the helped the other side
if they lose and play badly, he’ll say something that redounds to the idea that his team is a bunch of incorrigible children with the mental development of a pre-schooler. An important feature of this move is that he’ll grudgingly “accept responsibility” in a way that deepens the insult - like “But it’s on me, I guess I need to coach them to tie their shoes.”
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Yeah, they went 13/25 from three last night and made more FT’s than KSU attempted. Don’t let any of their mouth breathers try to tell you they got “jobbed” or played bad, or “didn’t have it last night…” Uh what?
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I love it when he says something like “That guy is a 34% three point shooter and he went 2/4!”
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Right now the MSU line is “a 40% 3 point shooting reserve went 4/6”
MSU defensive performances late in the year:
- 1.37 PPP allowed at Iowa
- 1.34 PPP allowed vs KSU
- 1.30 PPP allowed at Michigan
When that defense collapsed it really collapsed. And it was almost always when MSU tried to play the two forwards together.
That’s somehow before last night.
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I’m just curious, how did they do with Kohler or Cooper at C? It sort of feels like a “trying to find the best of a series of bad options” situation (not saying they found the best necessarily).
Last night their bigs were getting cooked too tbh so not sure what the answer was.
Yeah, it had to be the option but they never figured out how to get it to work.
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This is great for my anti-Carson Cooper takes
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So Kohler, -.03 pp
Cooper, -.14 pp
Two forwards, +.01
total
Yeah, I don’t think it is about what they should or shouldn’t have done. The point is that the complete inability to play any defense with the two small lineup killed them in big spots and then killed them last night.
The extent to which everyone on MSU twitter seems to think Sissoko isn’t good but Cooper is confuses me.
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Feels like the inverse of the proposition of our two bigs lineup, where we were like “ok, we’re only scoring six points in the last 7 minutes, but if we only hold them to 8…”
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I think with MSU their 5 is just a mess. All of them are bad in someway. Them going with Hauser at the 5 lets their offense cook but at the expense of letting the opposing teams score at will. Definitely feels like an inverse of UM this year, just our 4 was a mess.
Last night MSU just couldnt play defense no matter what lineup they had out there.
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I think big picture they’re a pretty conclusively good team with Sissoko, just between stamina and fouling they need steal like 15 minutes with some pretty flawed groups.
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