Tom Izzo hopes Michigan State basketball learned one thing in tight loss to No. 3 Purdue

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — In a vacuum, if the previous week never happened, Tom Izzo could look at Saturday night’s dogfight at No. 3 Purdue through a different lens.

Taking Purdue to the closing seconds on the road in a building where Michigan State basketball hasn’t won in a decade.

Slowing down superstar Zach Edey in stretches. Battling for rebounds against the bigger, burlier Boilermakers. Clawing back from a 15-point hole to make it a one-possession game with 9 minutes to play.

Competing, plain and simple.

“After a game like this, it's tough to be OK with losing,” senior Malik Hall said in the locker room. “But, I mean, we played hard. And that's something that we've been stressing and coach has been stressing. He wants everybody to play with more passion, he wants people to play with more energy. And we saw that out there today.”

Yet last week, with home losses to Iowa and Ohio State, did happen. MSU now has lost three straight games with two remaining before the postseason. Not giving up — in the eventual 80-74 loss at Purdue or on the Spartans’ season — only carries so much weight.

Especially when the calendar has flipped to March.

Asked if he felt any better about his team after Saturday’s latest loss — MSU’s fourth straight to Purdue and seventh straight at Mackey Arena dating back to 2014 — Izzo called it “a loaded question and a tough question” while putting everything into a broader perspective.

“Here at Michigan State, there’s no moral victories,” he said. “I was pleased with that we competed. I think if we would’ve done that in the last two weeks, we would’ve won three more games. And that’s my fault, and that falls on me. I wish I had an answer.

“Do I think we’re in a better place? Do I think they understand? Do I think they saw the couple mistakes here and there and that the ‘my bads’ are OK, but you just won’t win against good teams? So I think that’ll help us. But this team competed tonight, against a very good team in a very, very, very difficult atmosphere.”

It leaves the Spartans (17-12, 9-9 Big Ten) barely clinging to a remote shot to slide into the No. 4 seed and get a double-bye in the Big Ten tournament, which begins March 13 in Minneapolis. They most likely will be playing during the second day as the No. 5, No. 6 or No. 7 seed, but could fall as far as the 10-seed with the final week of the regular season here.

That’s a sign of how muddled the middle of the pack is behind the Boilermakers (26-3, 15-3), who clinched a share of the Big Ten regular season title by erasing MSU’s eight-point first-half lead, and holding on late as the Spartans stayed within a few possessions.

But it also details how critical the final two games are for Izzo’s team. MSU hosts Northwestern at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Breslin Center (BTN), then wraps up the regular season next Sunday at Indiana (4:30 p.m., CBS).

“Just keep being level-headed, sticking together,” senior Tyson Walker said. “We gotta get back to work. We got two big games coming up that we gotta win. So we gotta have a big week of preparation, go out and play better than we did today.”

Walker led the Spartans with 14 points but made just 5 of 15 shots. A.J. Hoggard missed all seven of his first-half attempts and finished 3-for-13 for eight points; the senior point guard has reached double figures in scoring twice in the past seven games. Junior wing Jaden Akins went 4-for-9 for 13 points, but was limited early by foul trouble and sat the final 10:52 before halftime.

“Our seniors gotta play better. They just do,” Izzo said. “I gotta coach better, they gotta play better, and that’s the bottom line. And if they continue to compete like they did tonight, we’ll play better.”

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Yet those three guards, along with sophomore Tre Holloman (eight points on 3-for-7 shooting) also played a pivotal role defensively in doubling and pestering the 7-foot-4, 300-pound Edey. The reigning Big Ten and national player of the year finished with 32 points on 9-for-15 shooting; he drew 16 fouls and went 14-for-20 on free throws.

Izzo rotated his big men freely, though senior Mady Sissoko struggled mightily against Edey in his return to the starting lineup after being replaced by freshman Xavier Booker for one game. Sissoko had just one rebound and didn’t take a shot while picking up four fouls in 6:10 of action.

That left Booker (12:53) and sophomores Carson Cooper (15:10) and Jaxon Kohler (11:49) to rotate in vs. Edey. It also was more valuable experience and another confidence-building performance for Booker, who drew Edey away from the basket to drain a pair of 3-pointers, while tying his season high with 11 points to go with two rebounds. He was a game-best plus-11 while on the floor.

“All the things I'm doing now, I feel like I've always been capable of doing those things,” said Booker, who went 3-for-6 from the field and 3-for-3 at the free-throw line. “I'm just finally starting to get more of an opportunity to do them.”

Those are encouraging signs for Izzo, particularly with the NCAA tournament rapidly approaching. Last year’s Sweet 16 run allowed him to set a record for the most consecutive appearances in the Big Dance by a coach at one school, his 25th straight dating to 1998. Despite the loss, MSU moved up two spots in the NCAA’s NET Rankings on Sunday to No. 22 in the nation. They are No. 20 in kenpom.com and No. 19 on barttorvik.com.

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But even though his team remains a darling among the metrics gurus and numbers-driven projections, that only goes so far. Especially for Izzo, who in January called analytics “phony” and “crap.”

Coincidentally, that came after the Spartans’ 14-point road loss two months ago against the same Northwestern squad his team must now beat to end a three-game losing streak and prove it deserves a 26th straight NCAA invite.

“Sooner or later,” Izzo said Jan. 7, “if you look, at a guy's heart and you look into a guy's eye, and then you find out about a guy.”

On Saturday night, after dodging the black-and-gold streamers falling from the Mackey Arena ceiling to celebrate Purdue’s second straight Big Ten regular-season title, Izzo admitted he saw the necessary passion and effort from his players. Yet those traits will be meaningless to the NCAA selection committee if losses continue to mount.

Thriving now becomes about surviving and advancing daily, from here until whenever MSU’s season finally comes to an end.

“I just want to keep trying to win some games now,” Izzo said. “Because I do think if they got anything out of tonight — I got a good basketball team. And I'm not saying it's great, it's good. We just can't make these little mistakes.”

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

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Next up: Wildcats

Matchup: Michigan State (17-12, 9-9 Big Ten) vs. Northwestern (20-9, 11-7).

Tipoff: 7 p.m. Wednesday; Breslin Center, East Lansing.

TV/radio: Big Ten Network; WJR-AM (760).

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tom Izzo hopes Michigan State learned one thing in tight L to Purdue