NIT SEASON TIP-OFF

November 21, 2001

Tom Izzo

COACH IZZO: Well, I give a lot of credit to Syracuse. I think their quickness showed. I think their wanting to win the game showed a lot more than ours. Every loose ball, every jump ball, we won 80 percent of them and lost the ball, every out of bounds played. We thus played harder than we played, which is disappointing to me. It's been a trademark of our team, yet we got it taken to us tonight. They're some of the mind-boggling stats I've ever seen when you look at 32 turnovers, they scored 26 by us. I give Syracuse a lot of credit for some of that. I give us a lot of blame for a lot of that. I just felt like I'm disappointed with the effort we got because I thought in all the effort-related stats, they really out played us. It's a good team. They present some tough matchup problems for us. When Anderson got in foul trouble, it really hurt our rotation and we started to play guys that were tired when they were quicker than us in the first plays. I thought that had a lot to do with it. I guess you've got to give our kids credit, not too much for the comeback in the second half. Then we tie game, the following -- which was a good call, it was a good call. It was a ridiculous play. The next time we came down through a two-minute post, went right through his hands. Those were two key plays. We're just not good enough to make up for those. I thought our freshmen got exposed a little bit. I thought our depth and quickness got exposed. To shoot 65 percent the second half is a plus. To come back and rebound them after the performance, the first half I mean, we did not rebound at all. They just attacked the glass and I enjoyed watching this team. Unfortunately, I had to play them. But I enjoyed watching them because I thought they played with tremendous effort and hard.

COACH IZZO: That would be an understatement struggle a little bit. But, number one, I thought they did a pretty good job and, you know, I thought very early in the game we had enough good shots, just didn't get enough second shots. But we have some deficiencies that a zone exposes. I think I was a little disappointed maybe in our passing and trying to find the number of people. As I said, we got -- Ballinger got tired, I think. You know, it really hurt us a little bit more. Taylor got cramped up. That hurt us during that one run. So we didn't attack it great, but we shot 65 percent the second half. If you would have told me we were going to shoot 49 percent for the game against that zone, I would have said we had a great chance to win. 31 percent from 33 isn't great, but I guess that's a great throw point shooting team. They shoot 22. 75 percent from the line isn't bad, but we didn't get there enough. The turnovers and the points off turnovers was all effort related, and I take my hat off to his team because they just kicked our tails.

COACH IZZO: Sure it was a mismatch. They came like to us four perimeters line-up. We worked on playing Anderson a little at the four. We knew we were going to have some matchup problems. We couldn't do anything with it. Once Anderson got in foul trouble we had to but (inaudible) on him. The results weren't favorable. Duany did a good job. He's not made some of the shots I saw him make tonight. You have to give him credit. The most impressive Duany and Shumpert getting rebounds. We used to not do a good job of playing hard against Shumpert. Did a decent job on shooting. He started the game with three offensive rebounds. Our freshman got a little less.

COACH IZZO: Yeah, really easy when you got guys standing there. We gave little effort the first half, and I deserve to get ripped for it, because that was a joke. In six years I've been here I don't remember many games we played worse, but I don't remember many games when our effort on the rebounding was that poor. That's a staple of our program, which proves our freshman have not done a very good job of listening and we're going to work on that in the near future.

COACH IZZO: Doesn't bother me. I'm not thrilled. I don't want to be in the third-place game. My goal was to get to New York. I thought we needed to play games. I thought we needed to play a lot of games. Unfortunately, you know, a team like Fresno, people think Syracuse is athletic. I think Fresno might be more. We played them last year. It's going to be a good lesson for us. We're going to see if we have the ability to bounce back. We need to play games right now. We haven't had a lot of games, guys who haven't played at this level. Not just the freshman. I'm talking six or eight of our guys. We need to play games. I watched Kentucky and Duke and a lot of other teams lose two games here and had a hell of a year. I lost before. That doesn't phase me.

COACH IZZO: I was afraid going on the road with young guys, how they would respond. I thought they'd make mistakes. I didn't think -- I really think we would make effort-related mistakes, but it was a good lesson for me. I forgot those things. They haven't happened very often here in the last few years, so now what we talk about, we'll be able to show and that will be a good learning experience. I am disappointed in that part of the game. That's the only part. I really have great respect for what Syracuse did. I said going in if you look at our stat report. Some of the -- I thought they do a great job of getting swipes. I thought rebounding was going to be a big key, and both those kind of hit right on the head. They did them, and we didn't. As I said, we call things special teams where they're all the dead balls situations, jump balls based on the bounce, free throws. They dominated us in those areas, which are, for the most part, effort related and that part has to change.

COACH IZZO: Yeah.

COACH IZZO: Yeah, you know, I think there were some bright spots for us. I thought in a way Marcus played better. I thought we put him in position, couple of turnovers. Two of the balls slipped out of his hands. I can't blame him for that. He and Chris were the bright spots of the night. I thought they worked well together. Chucked very well, considering. Yet Chris did a good job. Yet as I looked at during the game there are things on the stat report. Who he wanted to be up on and off of we're not able to pick that stuff of yet. Couple of times it hurt us in key moments. Chris Hill was a bright spot. Marcus I think was kind of a bright spot. Adam went to work on the boards a little bit more the second half. I thought Adam Wolfe came in and did some good things, you know, but a couple of big baskets and a couple of just, you know, if we were in tennis, I'd say of the 26 turnovers they did a hell of a job on a lot of them but there was about six, eight or nine of them where we just gave them the ball, let it fall through our hands. Like I say, on those jump balls, didn't go get it. Those are the things we'll have to improve on. Those are the things you can improve on. They don't take a necessary skill. They take a little heart.

COACH IZZO: No. I'll tell you why, I just didn't see one face that I saw two years ago. You know, so there were no faces. But, I did think we did a decent job on the comeback, I thought, playing against a good team that has both some youth and some experience, but I think in key moments some of their experienced guys, you know, Williams and Duany, I say we did a decent job on Shumpert. Give Shumpert credit. He did a hell-of-a-job not playing out of his element, you know what I mean. That's pretty neat to score, what he scored in the last couple of games, shoot what he shot and play 40 minutes and go get it the old-fashioned way and go rebound and get offensive putbacks. There's a guy I thought impressed me in a different way tonight.

COACH IZZO: Okay.