Michigan State Spartans Insider Podcast: Recapping Spartans’ Win Over Penn State

EAST LANSING, Mich. — No. 12 Michigan State improved to 15-2 on the season with its home victory over Penn State on Wednesday, remaining undefeated at the Breslin Center and in Big Ten play.

Yet again, the Spartans were unable to put together a full 40 minutes, as they were outscored in the second half after leading by 10 at halftime.

Nonetheless, Michigan State came away as the victors and are now winners of 10 straight.

Our Aidan Champion recaps the victory on this postgame edition of the Michigan State Spartans Insider Podcast. You can watch below:

Below is a transcript from Michigan State coach Tom Izzo’s opening statement of his postgame press conference:

Izzo: “New shirt tomorrow: ‘be the same.’ That’s going to be tomorrow: be the same. Really disappointed in my maybe my defensive performance. And I’m telling you — I’m taking full responsibility for that because I knew we were — I thought after that game, we had given up 40 points in the last two games [in the second half], and we did not learn much from it. We talked about it, we talked about it as a staff, we talked about it with our players, we talked about talking to the officials, we talked about the way things are, and I didn’t get much carry-over tonight, so that means, I did not do a very good job of getting through to my guys. So, I can promise you tonight, I’m going to figure out a way to get through to them. On the positive side, 24 assists on 32 baskets is amazing. 20 out of 24 free throws. Got there a lot, made free throws. 10 turnovers was good, but we had three at halftime, and we had four or five in a row during that run when we were up 10. And that happened at Northwestern. So that means we cannot handle success right now. So quit saying where we are. Because we’re not anywhere yet. We’re a good basketball team that’s got a long, long, long, long ways to go to get better. OK? Period. That’s where we are. And Frankie Fidler had a hell of a game, but other than that, I thought we were very pedestrian-like. We took bad shots, the wrong guys were taking some shots — we got to get other guys some shots. And I’ll answer any questions you got, but not many times this year have I been disappointed in our defensive performance. Tonight, I’m very disappointed.”

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