Michigan State basketball: Tyson Walker's injury, A.J. Hoggard's struggles vex Tom Izzo

MINNEAPOLIS — Frustrated. Perplexed. Irate.

Those adjectives barely cover the gamut of emotions Tom Izzo tried to process in a 20-minute postgame interview that lasted far longer than his locker room talk with his players.

And far longer than it took Michigan State basketball to watch a nine-point lead melt away as its star, Tyson Walker, left the game.

With the Spartans appearing headed toward a rare road win Tuesday night, Walker reaggravated a recent groin injury and exited into the bowels of Williams Arena with the team training staff. It changed everything.

Minnesota took full advantage of the absence in the ensuing 3 minutes and 42 seconds. The Gophers scored 10 straight points, ultimately making the Spartans pay for missing 10 free throws en route to a 59-56 comeback.

“We just got to be better,” said Walker, who finished with 19 points in 32 minutes despite the injury. “We got to finish games. We can't play good in spurts. Especially not on a road.”

The reasons were plentiful in the loss for MSU (14-9, 6-6 Big Ten).

There were free-throw woes, missing five in each half to finish 7-for-17. The Spartans went just 2-for-10 in the second half from 3-point range after making 5 of 8 in the first. Defenders lost shooters despite talking through assignments with coaches; they also committed fouls on two 3-point attempts.

And after taking a 45-36 lead with a little more than 13 minutes to play, just before the Walker injury, Izzo’s team got outscored 20-11 the rest of the way. A late-game fade the Spartans appeared to be growing out of this season returning in soul-crushing fashion.

“I put on the board my No. 1 key — I put mental and physical toughness,” Izzo said. “So if you ask the question, do I think we're physically tough enough? Yes. Do I think we're mentally tough enough? No. And I think you gotta have both.

“You got to have mental toughness to win on the road. I don't think we showed mental toughness tonight. Physically, I thought we battled, it was OK. But mentally, you gotta make plays and you gotta do things.”

Without mentioning a name, saying he wanted to watch the game back on the flight home to “see if what I believe is true, is true,” Izzo used many more words and ways to describe what happened with in those moments.

Many of which could describe A.J. Hoggard’s second half.

The senior point guard missed his final five shots, four of them during the stretch with Walker out of commission. Two of those were jump shots with time left on the shot clock. Hoggard also got fouled on a 3-point attempt with 20.2 seconds remaining, then missed the third free throw which would have tied the game.

And after a pair of Cam Christie free throws put Minnesota back up by three with 18.5 ticks to play, Hoggard launched a one-man attack, taking then inbound pass the length of the court and driving to the basket as his teammates waited around the arc waiting for a pass.

His layup attempt rimmed out. Hoggard swatted at the offensive rebound and knocked the ball out of bounds to end any hope for a comeback.

“I don't like when we take bad shots in critical times,” Izzo said when asked about Hoggard’s late-game play, stopping short of pointing the finger at his fourth-year player. “I mean, that's when a veteran group's gotta take better shots.”

Asked if he needs Hoggard “to take care of you in those moments,” Izzo balked at the suggestion.

“Nope, I'm not saying that,” he quickly replied. “So don't quote me on that at all.”

What Izzo followed with, however, was damning.

“I'm the head of the snake,” he emphasized, “so I gotta do a better job of putting people in the right position. I'll just say that.”

Reclaiming “head of the snake” for himself is an indictment of how he felt — at least in that moment — about Hoggard and his team’s leadership. That is a term Izzo reserves for his point guards, an allusion to the aphorism that by cutting the head off a serpent, the body will die. Or in Izzo-speak, without sound point guard play, your team withers.

Walker reaggravated a groin injury that has been bothering him the past week while trying to track down a loose ball. The senior left the game with 12:37 and returned with 9:09, making just 3-of-7 after reentering for the rest of the game. He finished 8-for-18 overall and said he was “fine” despite still being hobbled by his groin issue long after the final buzzer.

“We were worried about him, worried if he's OK or not,” senior Malik Hall said of Walker. “But stuff like that can't affect us as much if we're going to be a great team. Obviously, he's a ginormous piece of our team, but great teams learn how to function. People need to step up when people go out.

Hoggard’s only basket before Walker left to get treatment was a layup less than 3 minutes into the second half. He was scoreless and did not take a shot but distributed five assists in the opening period; Hoggard finished with just four points on 1-for-6 shooting and did not have another assist after halftime.

“You know, my fault on the timeout, I don't mean that negatively. Tyson's fault for getting hurt. Our fault for missing a bunch of free throws,” Izzo said sarcastically. “Those things are gonna happen in a game. But you just gotta make plays. And sometimes plays aren't made — sometimes plays are made by the guys that get other guys the ball. I didn't think we did a very good job of that.”

Did Izzo, he was asked, think Hoggard tried to do too much with Walker out of the game?

“No,” he responded. “You know what I think? I think I did a bad job. I should have called a timeout. I should have put maybe different people in there. And realistically, it falls on me.”

MSU missed seven straight shots with Walker out of the game, and he missed his first attempt after returning. Holloman extended that drought to nine straight misses over a span of just over five minutes.

“We weren't running our offense right away,” Walker said. “We were walking around, didn't have the same kind of zip to us. And they did a good job of just denying us a little bit and making things tougher.”

By the time Walker ended the scoreless streak with 6:44 to play, the Gophers (15-7, 6-5) made it a one-possession game. It stayed that way almost the rest of the game. Dawson Garcia hit an end-of-shot clock 3-pointer with 1:25 to play, and Elijah Hawkins hit two more free throws with 6.5 seconds left to give Minnesota its largest lead of the second half at five and seal MSU’s fate.

The Spartans return home Saturday to face No. 12 Illinois (2 p.m./CBS). They lost to the Illini on the road last month, 71-68, after squandering a six-point lead in the second half.

But a chance at redemption, from what happened on Jan. 11 in Champagne and the similar outcome at Minnesota, was the farthest thing from Izzo’s mind as he tried to process how things unraveled Tuesday night.

“I'm not worried about Illinois. I'm not worried about Sunday. I'm not worried about Saturday. I'm not worried about Friday. I'm not even worried about tomorrow,” he said. “I'm worried about watching the film and figuring out what the hell happened.”

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.

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Next up: Illini

Matchup: Michigan State (14-9, 6-6 Big Ten) vs. No. 12 Illinois (17-5, 8-3).

Tipoff: 2 p.m. Saturday; Breslin Center, East Lansing.

TV/radio: CBS; WJR-AM (760).

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tom Izzo vexed, perplexed by Michigan State basketball loss to Gophers