EAST LANSING— 18 free throws were attempted in the final 30 seconds of the No. 11 Michigan State-Indiana men’s basketball game on Tuesday night.
The scores came within a point of one another, but never once tied. The Spartans didn’t see a lead after three minutes left in the first half.
MSU fell to Indiana 71-67.
“I don’t think the players played very well and I don’t think the coaches coached very well, so that’s a bad combination against a team that was desperate,” MSU head coach Tom Izzo said.
MSU had a flying start in the first half. The Spartans pulled away up to 12 points, but they began having shooting road bumps, racking up personal fouls and the Hoosiers took advantage.
Indiana went on a 9-0 run for four minutes and put MSU in a four-minute scoring drought. The Hoosiers were able to pursue and claim the lead in the final two minutes of the first half with just a minute and a half left to tally the score at 30-29.
MSU gave up its lead and wasn’t able to recover. Indiana led 32-29 going into the locker room at halftime.
The Spartans weren’t at a loss for personal fouls in the first half receiving 10 versus the Hoosiers six. Junior center Carson Cooper picked up three in the first half, putting him in foul trouble.
“There’s so many areas that I’m disappointed in,” Izzo said. “The three layups we missed in the first half. They get costly as you go, but the foul trouble we got in and a poor job that we did, we couldn’t double the post, but we sure could have dug down.”
Coming out of halftime the Spartans needed to make progress and keep the Hoosiers within striking distance. However, MSU just couldn’t quite ever reach Indiana to pass them up.
The Spartans pulled within one point twice and two points nine times and never tied. The Hoosiers were able to keep the Spartans away up to nine points in the second half.
“They didn’t hardly take a shot the second half,” Izzo said of Indiana. “They just pound the ball inside, pound the ball inside, pound the ball inside. Again, we’re in so much foul trouble. We didn’t guard it very well and then we didn’t adjust.”
MSU went on a couple of scoring runs, but they would quickly be stunted by personal fouls, turnovers or an Indiana run in return. Senior guard Jaden Akins made it a two-point game with just 32.7 seconds left on the clock with a layup to trail 62-60.
The Spartans had to go toe-to-toe with the Hoosiers for the next 32.7 seconds from the charity line. Redshirt sophomore guard Myles Rice went 2-2 from the free throw line, then senior forward Frankie Fidler responded also going 2-2 from the line to make it 64-62.
Junior forward Malik Reneau went 1-2 from the free throw line, but Fidler responded with another 2-2 trip at the line. Sophomore forward Mackenzie Mgbako went 4-4 from the line for Indiana and junior guard Tre Holloman went 3-4 from the line for MSU leaving it at 69-67.
The dagger was senior guard Anthony Leal going 2-2 from the free throw line with four seconds left to make it 71-67.
“To say disappointment would be an understatement,” Izzo said.
MSU will be heading back on the road this weekend to take on Illinois in Champaign on Saturday with the tip-off set for 8 p.m. Tune into the live radio broadcast featuring Matt Merrifield and Allie Cohen locally on 88.9 FM or at impact89fm.org/listen-live/.
