BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Sunday was a day for liars at Assembly Hall. It was OK. On Sunday, lying beat telling the truth.
|
|
| Tom Izzo can't believe his team has what it takes to make a tourney run. (AP) |
Liars.
Minutes later, in a quieter part of Assembly Hall, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo stood before the media and said he thought his team was good enough to play deep into March.
Liar.
But again, this was OK. Lying, that is. In both instances the truth would have been too painful to tell.
If Indiana fans will sleep easier by pretending for one day that they appreciate and even like the coach they ran out of town, so be it. Nobody believes it, but their cheering for Davis as he introduced his seniors was better than the alternative: 17,000 Indiana fans booing their unpopular coach off the floor one last time.
The cheers Sunday weren't the truth. The truth about the relationship between these fans and this coach was more real on Feb. 4, when Davis was still fighting for his job. No. 1 Connecticut was in town, and from the opening tip the crowd just wanted to leave. With more than a minute to play and Indiana within nine points, the building was half-empty and completely dead. Nobody in Indiana believed in Davis. Fine. But those who were cheering for Davis on Sunday? Nobody outside Indiana believes in you.
The relationship was so bad a few years back that Indiana briefly stopped introducing Davis before home games. It's a trick other schools have tried -- Missouri didn't introduce Quin Snyder before home games this season -- with good reason. It creates the illusion that the crowd is completely behind the basketball program. The last thing players need to hear before tipoff are boos for the coach who brought them here.
Illusions are necessary. Izzo knows. He has a psychologically fragile team -- way too fragile considering its best players are two seniors and a junior -- that is inching its way toward the cliff. Sunday was Michigan State's fourth loss in five games.
The Spartans were a consensus preseason top five team nationally -- please remember CBS SportsLine.com wasn't part of that consensus -- but today they are tied for sixth in the Big Ten. This is not a terribly good basketball team.
More to the point, this is not a likeable basketball team. Izzo cannot like his team. There's no way. I can't stand his team, and I've only been around Michigan State a few times. He has to deal with these guys every day. Izzo's dislike must be enormous.
That's nothing he was willing to say Sunday.
"I see this being a good enough basketball team to win a lot of games yet," Izzo said.
No way he believes that. This was senior center Paul Davis' 124th career game, and he got benched to start the second half for shooting the same fading jumper Izzo has been trying to eradicate since 2002.
Behind Davis, Michigan State has a fleet of useless power forwards to match Arizona's stable of useless guards and Kentucky's corps of useless 7-footers. Because Davis still doesn't play with enough smarts or enough toughness, Izzo had to run four power forwards, none of whose names I recall, at Indiana's Marco Killingsworth.
Michigan State has three players who can score, and 10 players who cannot. The three who can score -- Maurice Ager, Shannon Brown and Davis -- rank among the Big Ten's top five scorers. That ought to ensure Michigan State's placement among the national elite, but it doesn't. The Big Three are the Only Three.
Sophomore point guard Drew Neitzel shoots 94.6 percent from the foul line, but he only gets there once per game because he can't beat anyone off the dribble. Leave him completely alone and he'll make the 3-pointer, but only when he summons the courage to shoot it. He averages 8.9 ppg, but there's no quieter 8.9 ppg in the country.
Freshman Travis Walton has more moxie but less game. Problem is, nobody at Michigan State -- coaches, players -- realizes just how little game Walton and Neitzel have. In the final three minutes, with the Spartans finally in position to win after trailing by 16 early in the second half, Neitzel and Walton took over the game.
Make that turned over the game.
Neitzel shot a contested jumper off the side of the backboard. Next time, he hoisted a running hook over the backboard. The crowd of 17,276 wasn't cheering. It was laughing.
Then Walton got goofy. He threw the ball away on consecutive possessions, the latter an inbounds alley oop that was stolen by Indiana at the very instant Izzo was slapping his own face in disbelief.
"I'm really not worried," Izzo said later. "I'm not."
He's lying. Or worse -- he's not paying attention.
