East Lansing — Balanced atop a tall unicycle on the Breslin Center floor, performer Rong Niu, or Red Panda to her cult following, flipped bowl after porcelain bowl from her foot to her head. She nailed every trick, hopping down to the court as she bowed to a standing ovation.
It was about as loud as Michigan State’s home crowd got since tip-off.
Yet another first-half deficit for No. 15 Michigan State nearly spelled disaster against Ohio State, but a resurgent performance led by senior center Carson Cooper helped the Spartans to a 66-60 win Sunday at Breslin Center.
Even though that comeback gave the crowd more of what it wanted, it still wasn’t enough to satisfy MSU coach Tom Izzo.
“I was really disappointed in our team,” Izzo said afterward. “Really disappointed.”
Cooper led Michigan State (22-5, 12-4 Big Ten) with a career-high 20 points alongside 11 rebounds while point guard Jeremy Fears Jr. added 11 points and eight assists. Freshman shooting guard Jordan Scott also had 12 points. Despite foul trouble, forward Jaxon Kohler chipped in nine points and 10 rebounds of a 43-26 advantage on the boards. The Spartans outscored Ohio State 16-5 on second-chance points off of 15 offensive rebounds.
BOX SCORE: Michigan State 66, Ohio State 60
And yet, Ohio State (17-10, 9-7) came in and slugged its way to a 26-23 lead at halftime and even turned a 63-53 MSU lead with 1:35 to play into a 63-60 gap with 14.3 seconds to go. Point guard Bruce Thornton led the way with 32 points, more than half his team’s scoring, including 11 of his team’s 13 points in the final 6:37. His driving layups aided a 34-26 advantage in the paint.
“He plays the game the right way,” Ohio State coach Jake Diebler said. “He doesn’t try to trick anybody. He just plays with great poise. And I thought his toughness today — when we knew we were missing firepower offensively — he rose and stepped up. So I thought that was great and against an elite defensive guard (Fears).”
Michigan State, right now, isn’t, according to the head coach. Izzo told his team he’d be calling a meeting Sunday night to sort out the disconnect between this team’s talent and its sluggish starts, among other issues. In five of the past six games, Michigan State has trailed at halftime, averaging 27.8 points at the break in those games.
“Brian Gregory, my old assistant, used to have a saying: when it starts bad, a lot of times it ends bad,” Izzo said. “And it started bad. And give my team some credit that we bounced back.”
The first half was so sluggish that it affected the crowd, in what was the last game for many members of the Izzone student section. (Senior Day against Rutgers on March 5 is during spring break.) To Izzo, that was inexcusable.
At some point in the first half, Izzo says an assistant leaned over to Izzo on the bench and said, “Boy, the crowd’s kinda dead.”
“I said, ‘Kind of dead?’” Izzo cracked. “I said, ‘We scored nine points in the first 10 (minutes). You gotta have something to cheer for, you gotta have something to get excited about.”
If only Izzo heard the cheers for Red Panda.
What he did hear was the roar when his Spartans sparked a comeback. An 8-0 run in the second half turned a 33-28 deficit three minutes in into a 36-33 lead with 14:20 to play. Michigan State lost that lead midway through the half, then got it back on a 6-0 run from its starters that put the score 49-45 with 7:57 to play.
Ohio State ran out of gas. Colin White and Amare Bynum each stopped plays with apparent injuries. Four players hit four fouls, including midseason addition Puff Johnson and guard Taison Chatman, playing more with guard John Mobley Jr. injured. (Devin Royal, listed questionable with illness, did not play.)
Even closing out the game proved difficult. Up 63-53, Michigan State let Thornton carry the Buckeyes back with a 7-0 run in the final 1:30 until Scott and Cooper hit a combined three of four foul shots to ice it. A turnover, fouls, missed shots.
Games that start bad ….
It all added up, but not quite enough for an undermanned Ohio State down multiple players to get even. Cooper played a big role in that, scoring 14 of his points and hauling in seven boards in the second half.
“I was pissed at myself a little bit in the first half about not playing as well,” said Cooper, who scored 14 of his points after halftime. “And Coach (Izzo) definitely got on me about that. So I just wanted to try to make my impact.”
Michigan State needed Cooper, because its other starring big man spent most of the first half on the bench. Kohler picked up two fouls in the first three minutes, then picked up his third with 3:48 to play after checking in for the final five minutes of the half.
“When he got that third foul, I was thinking of all you guys,” Izzo said, referring to the assembled media inside Breslin Center. “Thinking of all the fans. Interesting.”
Without Kohler, Michigan State shot 8-for-27 in the first half and trailed 26-23, as Thornton scored 16 of those Ohio State points. Michigan State had just four points in the first four minutes, one of them a dunk jammed home by Coen Carr that did put some juice in the crowd. But an 8-0 run for the Buckeyes put them up 14-9 midway through the frame.
On one four-point swing, a charge on Carr wiped away a tough layup and Thornton scored again at the other end with 11:24 to play. Christoph Tilly took Ohio State’s first lead, 10-9, on the other side of a timeout. The Buckeyes held that until 15:09 of the second half.
Michigan State drew as close as three the rest of the first half, once off a 3-pointer from Kohler right before his third foul. Otherwise, it was a lackluster half that has the Spartans focused on more macroscopic matters.
“Stuff keeps happening, you know,” Fears said. “Like at what point is it going to change? The slow starts, the easy buckets, the not guarding. It’s been the same thing over and over.”
Rutgers, Penn State, Minnesota, at home.
“At what point is it going to click?” Fears asked.
That will be the topic of Michigan State’s postgame meeting sometime Sunday night. A heart-to-heart of sorts as the Spartans jockey for position in the Big Ten standings in the remaining four games. Next up is a toughie: Purdue at Mackey Arena, where the Spartans have lost seven straight dating back to 2014.
“It gets easier though,” Izzo said with some sarcasm. “We go to Purdue.”
cearegood@detroitnews.com
@ConnorEaregood
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Michigan State survives but another sluggish start leaves Izzo ‘really disappointed’
Reporting by Connor Earegood, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
