ROSEMONT, Ill. — It’s already almost that time of year. Michigan State men’s basketball’s season will open almost exactly one month from now, and they couldn’t be more excited.
The Spartans have struggled to reach the standard that’s been set for the program year in and year out throughout Coach Tom Izzo’s time at the helm, but with a team that has what seems to be perhaps the best chemistry it’s had in years, talented transfers and freshmen coming in and several returners with tremendous potential, there’s penty of reasons to believe Michigan State can get back to its winning ways this year.
Michigan State center Xavier Booker and guard Jaden Akins addressed the media at Big Ten Basketball Media Days in Rosemont, Illinois on Thursday, discussing the upcoming season, the freshmen class, “Grind Week,” their trip to Spain and more.
You can watch below:
Below is a partial transcript from Izzo’s last week:
Izzo: “This is a little more informal than most opening days because we opened yesterday and it’s so different now with — it used to be Midnight Madness and all this. Now we’ve kind of had a new way of looking at things. But the other part that’s different is we went to Spain. So, we’ve kind of — it seems like we’ve been practicing forever. But the good news is I like my team. The first official day was good. Today is Day 2, and it’s actually good to get back with you guys too. Once you get older in this job, you kind of realize that what I learned real early in life, everybody’s got a job to do, everybody’s got a boss to please. And you and I got something in common. You got all the readers. I’ve got 600,000 living alums to please. So, we both really should help each other a little more than we do. In some ways, I feel like we already have been started. When you go to Spain, and in that Spain trip, I thought we played pretty well. It was hard to get a little bit of a feel because I had so many guys that I wanted to play, so I kept everybody from like 12 minutes to 20 minutes. Most guys played like 16 to 20 minutes, which means you get to see a lot of people, you don’t get [as much of] a flow. A little hard to see what they did per minute, so we had to work on some things on that. There was some highlights over there. Jaxon Kohler played very well, Fears [Jeremy Fears Jr. was not 100% ,but I think 95%, back. I mean, [Xavier] Booker one game had 19 in the first half. I don’t think I’ve ever had a player get 19 in the first half. We played really good against good competition the first game, pretty good against a team that wasn’t as good the second game, and the third game, we asked them to try to get somebody, so they went out and got a Serbian team that had been practicing for three weeks, and they were really good. And the score was 115 to 110 or something. We got beat. But again, we did not play it as a game. I subbed freely the whole time. But I did get something out of that thing. The biggest thing that I got out is they were: I think we’re a lot tougher team than we were last year, but not compared to those guys. I thought we got punked a little bit, especially with our guards. I don’t think they were ready for the pressure they were going to put on us, But it’s not something that worries me.”
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