Oh, What a (Horrific) Night: North Carolina 89, Michigan State 82

But I think we beat this team 5-6 out of 10 games. Putting the ball in the basket does count for a lot and they’ll never do that better than they did tonight and we’ll seldom do it worse. They were undisciplined and took a lot of bad shots that either went in or were SO bad that the rebound was a crap shoot that went their way most times. The game was badly called, not ridiculously so, but enough to give them an edge at the line. It was the usual story of the more aggressive team getting away with more, especially at home. I agree that the problem was a lack of poise and confidence in key situations. After the terrible shooting for 3+ quarters, no one was willing to at least try to deliver the dagger from outside that might have made it even closer.

Is nothing to get too upset about. Carolina is built like a pro team-all big, rangy, and quick. The game did show that our lack of size separates us from UNC, UK, and KU, unless Izzo finds a way to counteract that by utilizing our versatility and speed. But we are going to struggle defensively against talented bigs. That is where we are really hurt by the lack of development from Herzog. The good news is that no one in our conference has post depth like UNC. The bad news is that those teams will be waiting in March.

But right now as a fan, I feel like MSU could go 15-1 in the Big Ten and make it to the Final Four and I would still think of them as “the team that can’t handle North Carolina.” There’s a tiny part of me that will feel letdown for a while over this. No victory will taste quite as sweet as it could have, save one. Geez, I really hope that is irrational and it passes.

It’s like we’re the pre-Super Bowl victory Colts and they’re the Patriots. I’m ready for Kalin Lucas to have his 2006 Manning-moment because it sure wasn’t last night.
Actually, I like this comparison and I’m sticking with it. It feels accurate. I’m really hoping the tournament produces our 2006 AFC championship game.

Luke Winn with a concise tempo-free description of MSU’s defensive problems:

The Spartans allowed 1.14 points per possession to the Tar Heels on Tuesday — the exact same amount the ’08-09 State team allowed to a far superior UNC club in the national title game in Detroit. The ultra efficient foursome of Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson, Danny Green and Wayne Ellington are all gone, but the Heels were still equally as effective.

The intensity of the Spartans in the second half was more like what I expected throughout the game. Way too much one-on-one play in the first half. Lucas is not distributing the ball the way he needs to in order to be a truly effective point guard. Had a few bounces gone our way and a few shots fallen, we might have pulled it out. I think the team was spent though, after having to battle back from so far back, and having Green and Roe foul out.

I think it’s time to experiment in the next four games. I’d like to see Allen move farher down toward the end of the bench, with Thornton getting some of his minutes. Thornton is a far scappier player, and his three point shooting can’t be any poorer. We keep hearing about Allen’s stroke, but we have yet to see it in the big games.

With some lower expectations, this team can rise again. it seems to be the same story each year.

What I’d love to know is how the offense performed at various points in the shot clock. Anecdotely, I remember thinking that if the clock was down to about 13-15 and we were setting up a play, you might as well kiss the possession good-bye. The team seemed to get nothing out of those situations. If we scored, it was early, on a break, offensive rebound, or quick open jumper. Setting up a play late in the possession was worthless.

I’m wondering if the stats would back me up. Someone should do a chart like DrDetroit does for football.

Anderlecht, no doubt that Allen is a better athlete than Thornton, but he has yet to maximize his potential. In fact, I would argue that his penchant for missing his open threes has a deflating effect on the team. You can see the confidence drain as he misses, and when he shoots we collectively hold our breath.

Thornton can develop with some additional playing time. I like that he will hit the floor, and he will rebound. A little bench time might be motivating for Allen.

Biggest issue I see is that he looks really uncomfortable handling the ball against any kind of pressure. If he played longer stretches of minutes, I think opposing defenses would eventually get him to turn it over pretty frequently.

Ultimately, the existing core playing group just has to be able to play consistent, confident offense for 40 minutes to offset the team’s apparent defensive shortcomings.

Slightly surprised at all the doom and gloom. Although I agree that UNC is clearly in our heads, they are beatable… especially on a neutral court. More importantly, Izzo has this team getting progressively better and better. Think about last year’s losses to Maryland and UNC early in the season. If I had told you that we would go on to beat USC, Kansas, Louisville, and UConn in fairly commanding fashion, would you have believed me? I’m not trying to blindly follow and believe that this team can repeat the success of last year, but to be so concerned about how far this team will advance in postseason play is a bit premature, IMO.

I’m not sure why this always happens against UNC. It is getting tiring. At this point I subscribe somewhat to the psychology theory mentioned by others. It seems we get panicked and flat footed against them the way we do not get against any other team. That’s why they get those wide open shots, beat us to rebounds repeatedly, and everything they throw up seems to go in.

It’s like the basket becomes a miniature black hole for them whenever they play us, it’s gravitational pull sucking in any shot that is near the rim. On the rare occasion when they do miss a shot it’s like the ball is magnetized and they’re made of iron – it bounces right to someone for an open mid-range jumper. The only thing that makes sense is that everyone on our side is a little panicked and that is sucking the intensity out of them.

@ Anderlecht – until last night we looked good shooting the ball on paper, especially Allen, who had a sterling 3 point shooting percentage going into this game. Unfortunately, he never shows up in our big games. His shooting percentage is padded by very good shooting in games we are going to win anyway, and mediocre to bad shooting in games where we really need his scoring. Basically, he stuffs his stat sheet against mid-majors and doesn’t tend to show up when we play BCS caliber competition. Lucas shoots pretty well from 3, but Summers has not been very accurate from downtown (he was around 25% from 3 going into last night’s game).

What we need in the backcourt is for Allen to start being the consistent three point threat we expected and for Summers to find a way to use his athleticism to become a consistent scorer. As it stands you don’t know what you are going to get from either on a game-to-game basis. Lucas is pretty consistent from downtown (and otherwise) but he’s our point guard and should not be our primary 3 point shooting option. Ditto for Lucious – plus his height makes it harder for him to get perimeter shots off against teams with length on the perimeter.

I thought Lucas and Morgan and Green came to play last night. All three forced things at times but at least they weren’t playing scared. Roe played well and played within himself, but he’s still kind of a role player on offense. It’s time for him to become a consistent inside scoring threat like Deon Thompson and Ed Davis. As it is he made the right choice of schools because I don’t think he would be seeing much PT on this Carolina team (much less last year’s).

I rarely criticize Izzo’s coaching decisions but having Sherman try to guard Thompson straight up was a recipe for a disaster – there is no way he’s capable of that at this point. I have to think Nix is hurt or riding the pine due to his free throw shooting or doing something that got him in Izzo’s doghouse, because his stats look pretty good as far as D and rebounding, and Sherman is not providing much in the way of scoring so it’s not like we lose much offensively with Nix in there. He’s a net plus due to his D and the space he eats up. In any case if we were going to play Sherman on Thompson (or Davis for that matter) we needed to help him out.

I know we always do things the “Michigan State Way” on D, but I think it is time for us to consider adjusting our defensive approach somewhat to fit our personnel a little bit better. We’ve got back court depth and I think it’s time we used it to press and trap more than we typically do. This team looks great in transition but without legitimate outside shooting threats and an undersized front line it is hard for us to score in the half court.

The occasional zone would be a good idea too to protect our interior D. As someone noted in the game thread last night, the rebounding advantages of man-to-man don’t do you much good if the other team is hitting close to 100 percent from the paint and 60 percent from the perimeter – there just won’t be that many boards to be had. We showed a knack last night in getting steals and I think we should exploit that. Overall our D was a disappointment – we have been good at limiting opponent’s eFG percentage this year but were atrocious at it last night. We had been particularly good at limiting opponent’s 3 piont shooting percentage but last night UNC hit better than 50% from three. We scored 1.05 points per possession, which is not too bad considering we were ice cold from the perimeter. It was our D that really let us down.

UNC Assistant Coach predicts first play

Where lack of confidence dooms us. UNC has always been able to handle our set plays (kudos to good coaching on their end, perhaps?). It’d be nice to see some individual playmaking and confidence in their shot.

Not sure how much of that is on our defense (some, certainly), but it has to be slightly encouraging that we came within 7 points despite the usual foul disparity against UNC, their great shooting, and the fact that our range apparently ended at 20’ 8" (seriously, how many toe-on-the-line almost-threes do we make?). Those open shots will fall more often than they did tonight.

In order to live up to our preseason billing, we’re going to need Nix and/or Sherman (preferably both) to step up in a big way. But this is still going to be a pretty good team even with that weakness on the interior.

Last night’s debacle has been percolating in my head and in my opinion, the game was lost due to three main factors.

The first – the only one we couldn’t do anything about – was Carolina’s crazy shooting, especially in the first half. Davis and Thompson are legit big men with well-rounded games, don’t get me wrong. But seriously, some of those shots? I kept waiting for the UNC team to show up that flailed against Syracuse a couple of weeks ago, especially with only a single day’s rest. Maybe last night was the law of averages evening out, but holy crap, anything they flipped in the general direction of the hoop went in. Jumpers, threes, down low, everything was falling. It reminded me of last year’s Northwestern loss a bit. What can you do when a team is just unconsciously hitting shots like that?

The second was allowing those bigs to establish position. This seemed to improve in the second half, but man was it awful in the first. As good as Roe and Green are at doing the dirty work and providing some glue for this club, they couldn’t match UNC’s size inside. Sherman’s too green yet to have a significant impact, though he did play promisingly at times last night. So if you can’t defensively neutralize your opponent in the post, then please, PLEASE make every effort to keep them from getting to the post! KJ hit on this and I saw it as significant. We’re really missing Suton and even guys like Ibok and Naymick right now. For all their faults, they eventually became able to keep opposing players from getting set down low. Letting that player get established and THEN trying to take him on – the battle is nearly lost already. Keeping him up high and near the perimeter should be a much higher priority for our guys. Like I said, this was improved in the second half but at that point it was too late. Even so, it might not have had a huge impact in this game, given UNC’s crazy HORSE-shooting ability last night. But still, work to prevent that position establishment and at least force them into working for those points instead. I agree that expectations require recalibration at this point.

Tangent on point two: We have a huge, gaping hole at center. People keep wondering why Herzog isn’t getting more minutes. I will concede that he plays with more aggressiveness than the past two years, but he’s still fragile and ineffective at establishing/maintaining any position on either end of the floor. I’d rather have an undersized player getting shot over the top of than his flimsy frame in there when something’s on the line. Sherman shows much promise, and while I think he should have played more last night, he’s no phenom. And I wanted to see more of Ft. Nix last night, as I think he does well keeping opponents out of position, but I wonder if he sat due to his lack of speed and conditioning at this point. I’m confident he will develop into a very valuable asset, but he needs time to appreciate. Given all this, and the lack of size of our capable candidates to pick up the slack (i.e., Roe, Green, and even Morgan), we are very vulnerable inside. And if anyone needed an exhibition on where our Achilles Heel is, ESPN aired a two-hour documentary last night. I deluded myself into thinking we could handle opponents with size after the Gonzaga game, but while the Zags had considerable size, they didn’t have the shooting touch that UNC’s bigs have. As soon as we face an opponent with formidable options down low, we will be in trouble this year. And that trouble turns ugly quickly if we don’t take advantage of our strengths (see point three, below).
 
The third, which became evident quickly in the first half and has been commented on already, was confidence. I was actually impressed with Allen’s apparent confidence early. He took about three shots right off, and though he missed them all, I was happy to see that he seemed to be looking for and taking his shot. After those misses, I think he got in his own head and gradually got more and more hesitant on the ball. Further into the game, he was overtly passing up open looks, putting the ball on the floor when NO ONE was in front of him, and passing back to teammates. Izzo called a time-out during a second-half possession (that State was trying desperately to throw away) and both he and Montgomery were pleading/screaming with/at Allen to SHOOT THE BALL. I don’t care if you’re 0-100 – you’re a shooter so you SHOOT! Your strength isn’t to drive, slash, or even play incredible defense. Allen is on this team as a shooter, and he renders himself entirely impotent when he gets in his own head like last night. Summers suffered from the same affliction for a while last night too, passing up open looks and putting the ball on the floor instead of into the air. It was so frustrating. I know players get into funks just like they get hot, but I’m a numbers person (I’ll give KJ a nerdy chest-bump if I ever meet him) and sooner or later, all streaks end. Good or bad. So once again, you’re 0-100? Then shoot a hundred more, because with every one, you’re one closer to ending that streak.

I think the whole psychology aspect of the game can be way overblown, but I do agree with a few here who’ve commented that UNC is in MSU’s head. When you play a team this many times in fairly frequent succession, and get embarrassed in some form or another every single friggin’ time, I think you end up in a very fragile place and as soon as there are a few bumps in the road, the potential for slipping inexorably into a mental funk is huge. For the fans, coaches, and players, everyone had "here we go again" written plainly all over the faces and actions last night. While a loss is still a loss, and an embarrassment is still an embarrassment, this team does deserve much credit for not rolling over last night, and actually working themselves back into relevance before time expired. I don’t know if Roy had called off the dogs by that point, but UNC’s shots weren’t all crazily finding the net and they were actually having to work at things to maintain their lead. So this team does have the intestinal fortitude to put its head down and plow through – I just don’t know why they have to freak out early on and dig a big hole before rediscovering this face against elite opponents. They’ve got the talent (at 1-4, anyway), and they’ve ultimately got the guts. They just need to learn how to utilize both of them effectively so that they can get back to battling a single opponent, instead of a second one (themselves, mentally) as well.

Looks like we’re going to need Wisconsin and Ohio State to both pull it off. Illinois was down 20 at the half, and Michigan just gave up the first 7 points of the half to go down 17. Minnesota’s up a little on Miami, and we definitely need that to hold if we’re going to have a chance.

Carolina had an eFG% of 62.3% in this game, a mark they exceeded once before this season against North Carolina Central. Last year’s pitiless machine (to steal a phrase from Gasaway) only reached that level 4 times, against Chaminade, UNC-Asheville, College of Charleston and a February beatdown of Maryland where they went 16-25 on threes. I have to believe we’re more like Maryland than that other group and that we got them on a shooting night they may never repeat. Yes, the way the Spartans looked trying to handle it was frustrating but, unlike either game last year, we held on to the ball and were a couple of bounces away from really putting a scare into them. And, by the way, less than 3 weeks after their beatdown that same Maryland team beat UNC in overtime in game where the Tar Heels’ eFG% was a very mortal 40.9%.