+5 vs Duke

[Spartanmack]

Sounds like a bit of sour grapes. As much as I can't stand them dook deserves a ton of credit for the game they played. After we hit 4 straight 3s they pushed their defense out and locked down the 3 point line. They're easily the 2nd best if not best defensive team we faced in the tourney. I do agree that the officiating stunk. Their guards were more aggressive and physical locking down the arc than we were in the paint on their bigs. The refs didn't call fouls on aggressive play away from the basket but were whistle happy on touch fouls in the paint. It contributed to making the game unwatchable an foul trouble was probably a contributing factor but we got beat pretty badly.

 

[lucke]

A little of both, msu took bad shots and duke started to trap on ball screens vs switching or hedging, that's why those open 3's went away.

Duke was the better team and most likely would have won over 40 minutes of clean basketball but what we saw was a farce. That game wasn't even that physical but there was more than one foul every minute. We wanted to run Okafor into the ground but you can't do that with 46 total fouls called.

Izzo said that he needs to recruit different players if this is how the game is going to be called. He thinks you need a pg that's going to get to the line because that's all offense is now. He has a lot of respect for coach k so he didn't say more but I think he should have gotten t'd up at the end to prove a point.

Again, duke was the better team and likely would have won but we never got to watch the kind of game we wanted to see. What we saw in the last 10 minutes of every half was a free throw parade with our better players on the bench

100% agree. It was unwatchable because the refs took over. Duke was the better team so there was no need to for the refs to help them out like they did, especially on that national stage. I'm not sure what was worse, State's offense or the refs BS calls.

 

[MSUMatt28]

Izzo will HAVE to adjust as he said because you just know more rules changes are coming with all the outcry again this season about the lack of scoring. People are going to point to physical play as the reason, so I'd expect games next year to be called a lot more closely with even more of an emphasis than existed at the start of the 2013-2014 season.

Physical play is only a small part of it though. Most of it is simply the coaching philosophies. Teams rarely full court press anymore because they don't want to give up easy buckets (and well drilled teams carve them up anyway). They keep 3 players back to prevent fast breaks, which also reduces their chances for offensive rebounds. Both of those things also lower scoring.

Any rules changes could easily backfire. We will probably see a move to a 30 second shot clock, and if you combine that with more tightly called games, then you'd probably see a bunch more teams move to zone defense in order to avoid foul trouble and force teams to work very late into a shorter shot clock.

 

[Sbee]

One bad thing about the officiating was that it was so inconsistent from the Virginia and Louisville games. This game was a game of patty cake compared to the others but 20% more fouls were called and that included ot vs Louisville.

I think we fouled more and even got a few make up calls. It was just so tight that we had no chance. Dukes role players are McDonald's AA guys, getting deep into their bench didn't hurt them as much.

 

[gotime909]

One bad thing about the officiating was that it was so inconsistent from the Virginia and Louisville games. This game was a game of patty cake compared to the others but 20% more fouls were called and that included ot vs Louisville.

I think we fouled more and even got a few make up calls. It was just so tight that we had no chance. Dukes role players are McDonald's AA guys, getting deep into their bench didn't hurt them as much.

Well I'd say we were lucky that those games were called to favor our style of play.

 

[Sbee]

Well I'd say we were lucky that those games were called to favor our style of play.

I agree, they let both teams play. You don't want a game where guys get mugged but you don't want every possession to be a blow by lay up or foul either. Izzo said it in his post game presser that the NABC decides to make changes and they go overboard in how it's enforced. I think izzo was very careful in what he said last night out of respect for duke but you could tell he was pissed with good reason.

 

[MSUMatt28]

Virginia and Louisville are also physical teams so refs are going to let more things go when both teams play that way. No way in hell were they going to let a game on the biggest stage turn into a slugfest, and that goes double when one of the teams involved is Duke.

 

[Sbee]

Virginia and Louisville are also physical teams so refs are going to let more things go when both teams play that way. No way in hell were they going to let a game on the biggest stage turn into a slugfest, and that goes double when one of the teams involved is Duke.

As a casual fan I'd hate watching a game that's a parade to the free throw line all night and seeing all of the better players on the bench.

 

[Spartan23MSU]

Kentucky's players showed their true colors with this loss. A complete lack of class.

I'm no fan of UW or Ryan, but it's hard to dislike this group. Unlike his previous teams, these guys are seriously good. And clutch too. You look at pretty much every game going back to the Big Ten tournament and they've been challenged plenty of times, but they've owned the last 5 minutes and generally executed flawlessly during the biggest moments.

One of the Harrissons and Caulley stein didnt shake hands after the game, then one of the harrisons with "FTN" on the press conference. I harvest some enjoyment seeing them go down.

As far as our game Ill agree even with the whistle not blowing every 20 seconds we still lose this one. Its a totally different game when the refs let the teams play. Virginia and Louisville were great games to watch for that reason alone. Unless its TRULY a foul put the damn whistle away and quit trying to dominate the game.

 

[Sbee]

One of the Harrissons and Caulley stein didnt shake hands after the game, then one of the harrisons with "FTN" on the press conference. I harvest some enjoyment seeing them go down.

As far as our game Ill agree even with the whistle not blowing every 20 seconds we still lose this one. Its a totally different game when the refs let the teams play. Virginia and Louisville were great games to watch for that reason alone. Unless its TRULY a foul put the damn whistle away and quit trying to dominate the game.

As for the harrison, just poor sportsmanship, I didn't need any extra incentive to cheer against Kentucky though.

I've said a number of times that we still likely lose without the calls, they were better but the whistle parade made it a certainty. Either way the better team won.

We need to adjust to how the game is called better, we're -207 in free throws in the last two years. This is too big of a number to ignore. The way games are called is horribly inconsistent but we need to adjust better in game.

 

[Spartanmack]

As for the harrison, just poor sportsmanship, I didn't need any extra incentive to cheer against Kentucky though.

I've said a number of times that we still likely lose without the calls, they were better but the whistle parade made it a certainty. Either way the better team won.

We need to adjust to how the game is called better, we're -207 in free throws in the last two years. This is too big of a number to ignore. The way games are called is horribly inconsistent but we need to adjust better in game.

I don't know what the standard deviation is but that's less than 3 per game. Assuming our opponent shoots .80 as a team (very aggressive assumption), that's barely 2 pts per game. I'm sure though that the foul differential against is skewed to B1G and power 5 opponents, especially against elite teams. So the foul differential is possibly in our favor in nonconference, non-power 5 games and then probably more than 3 per game against us for most B1G and power 5 opponents - the 2003 Texas game in the tournament comes to mind where 2nd hlf FTs were 20:3 - we couldn't breath on TJ Ford w/o getting called for a foul and couldn't get a whistle in our favor all night.

It's frustrating because it's not just the number of calls but the (seeming) frequency with which we get really soft or outright bad calls against (Dawsons 2 quick ones last night for example, or Raymar Morgan racking up 3 (2 ghost calls) in the 1st half against Butler). Those are the situations - where a key player gets sent to the bench or has to play w/ caution - that really have an impact on a game.

 

[Sbee]

207 more free throws or maybe 2pts per game turns a lot of wins into losses. I know it's not an exact correlation but how many ot losses this year? 5? Of course we are an aggressive man to man team that crashes the boards, we will pick up some fouls due to the aggressive nature of our play. If we weren't as aggressive, teams might shoot better from the floor.

If we had a good slasher guard who could draw fouls that would be huge. We could play our brand most games and then just drive over and over when it's being called like last night. Of course guards that can create like that don't want to run sets in izzo offense

 

[Sbee]

The other thing that really works against bus is izzo's reputation. When you're know for smash mouth basketball you're less likely to get those 50 50 calls, especially against coaches like coach k or bo Ryan.

 

[Spartanmack]

207 more free throws or maybe 2pts per game turns a lot of wins into losses. I know it's not an exact correlation but how many ot losses this year? 5? Of course we are an aggressive man to man team that crashes the boards, we will pick up some fouls due to the aggressive nature of our play. If we weren't as aggressive, teams might shoot better from the floor.

If we had a good slasher guard who could draw fouls that would be huge. We could play our brand most games and then just drive over and over when it's being called like last night. Of course guards that can create like that don't want to run sets in izzo offense

3 FTS or 2 pts per game isn't a huge differential for an aggressive team and if you use a more reasonable FT% like, .7, it's less than 2 pts per game. Like I said in my first post, the variance is probably pretty high depending on the opponent but some of those fouls occur in OT or in games where we get blown out (like Saturday), so you can't just say 2 ppg turns a lot of losses into wins.

I'm not saying it doesn't have an impact - in my mind, it clearly does. But there are so many other factors you can't control for so it's hard to measure how much. In a well officiated game, you should barely even be aware of the refs. That wasn't the case Saturday. The officiating was horrendous and obvious (my wife even complained about it and she barely understands the game). It dictated the pace, lineups, etc, etc. But it's probably more often the case that it takes a game you have a 33% chance of winning to effectively no chance (again, like saturday) more often than flipping close wins to close losses. That's not a justification or dismissal of the problem and it doesn't make it any less painful to watch or any less of an injustice, particularly for the players that put in all the work. I'd be so much happier w/ a 10+ loss if the game were called a little more loosely and a lot more consistently than I am after suffering through that horrible whistle-fest. I'd feel a lot better about the loss if we didn't have so many stupid turnovers and defensive lapses too though.

 

[Sbee]

3 FTS or 2 pts per game isn't a huge differential for an aggressive team and if you use a more reasonable FT% like, .7, it's less than 2 pts per game. Like I said in my first post, the variance is probably pretty high depending on the opponent but some of those fouls occur in OT or in games where we get blown out (like Saturday), so you can't just say 2 ppg turns a lot of losses into wins.

I'm not saying it doesn't have an impact - in my mind, it clearly does. But there are so many other factors you can't control for so it's hard to measure how much. In a well officiated game, you should barely even be aware of the refs. That wasn't the case Saturday. The officiating was horrendous and obvious (my wife even complained about it and she barely understands the game). It dictated the pace, lineups, etc, etc. But it's probably more often the case that it takes a game you have a 33% chance of winning to effectively no chance (again, like saturday) more often than flipping close wins to close losses. That's not a justification or dismissal of the problem and it doesn't make it any less painful to watch or any less of an injustice, particularly for the players that put in all the work. I'd be so much happier w/ a 10+ loss if the game were called a little more loosely and a lot more consistently than I am after suffering through that horrible whistle-fest. I'd feel a lot better about the loss if we didn't have so many stupid turnovers and defensive lapses too though.

I did say in my post you can't just tack on two points or 1.7 to each game and adjust what the record would have been but it's obviously a factor in close games. The question I pose is how much would we lose if we didn't foul as much but weren't as aggressive on defense and on the boards, it might be a lot more than 1.7 ppg, maybe fouling just comes with the territory, like how home run hitters will strike out more, you take the good with the bad. We really just need a penetrating guard who can get to the line. Kalin Lucas would have been unstoppable in these kinds of games. if you had the physical style and then you could switch your offense up based on how the game is called, you'd be a much better team. again, those PG's don't want to play for Izzo though, they want dribble drive offense and other coaches tell them that they'll just be running sets in EL.

All of that said I'm just disappointed in how some games are called vs others, if it was consistent from game to game you could adjust to it. the Louisville game was twice as physical and had 20% fewer fouls and they played 5 extra minutes.

I re-watched the game last night stone sober (that was not the case on saturday) and the two late fouls on Dawson were just awful. we were on a 7-0 run cutting the lead from 20 to 13, the first one was called a foul when Cook simply tripped and Dawson was the closest guy to him, then after they threw it inbounds Dawson stripped Jones clean and they whistled him for #4, that play would have likely led to a run out lay up or dunk for us as well, making it 11 with Dawson on the floor. Not saying we would have completed the comeback but the game would have been a lot different.