It is one of the enigmas of this season, a hugely talented riddle that has offered up more shoddy stretches than stretches of brilliance.
Michigan State lost at Kansas, where it committed 24 turnovers that led to 34 Jayhawks points. It got routed at home by Duke, which made the Spartans look as soft as a souffle. It lost in overtime to Oklahoma after trailing by 15 early in the second half. And Saturday Michigan State (3-3) must face eighth-ranked Kentucky at Ford Field in Detroit.
Where does one begin to try to understand the puzzle that is Michigan State–a team touted as a national championship contender? How about with a guy named Erazem Lorbek?
Last spring, during the Spartans’ Elite Eight NCAA tournament run, the 6-foot-9-inch freshman forward from Slovenia finally blossomed. He averaged 12 points and 5.5 rebounds over four games.
That performance stamped him as a nascent star, who surely would grow in his second season in the United States. That’s certainly what coach Tom Izzo thought as he drew up a torturous non-conference schedule for his team. When Lorbek departed for home in May, he left behind all his belongings and was clutching a round-trip ticket.
“But then an agent got to him,” Izzo said. Soon, Lorbek told Izzo he was turning pro.
“We had time to adjust to it, but not time to recruit to it,” Izzo said.
Lorbek’s absence left a yawning hole at power forward that Izzo has tried to plug with oft-injured Jason Andreas. But Andreas has proven inadequate, so Izzo has scrambled, often asking guards Kelvin Torbert or Alan Anderson to handle that role.
“Lorbek wasn’t our best player,” Izzo said. “But he was a piece to the puzzle and [if he had stayed], we don’t have to put guys in positions they aren’t ready for.”
Would Izzo have drawn up the schedule he did if he’d known Lorbek was leaving?
“I would have still played a tough schedule,” he said, “but I wouldn’t have gone overboard.”
But overboard he went. After facing Kentucky, the Spartans travel to UCLA and Syracuse before beginning their Big Ten schedule. That is why they need to find the toughness that has been lacking, with skinny guards playing down low in Lorbek’s place.
Yet there is more at work here. In 2001, Jason Richardson turned pro after his sophomore year. Richardson had learned the Michigan State way from competitors like Mateen Cleaves and Andre Hutson. But without Richardson there was no player to teach that way to newcomers Torbert, Anderson and guard Chris Hill.
Torbert, Anderson and Hill are juniors now and the heart of this Spartans team.
“I’ll go back to what [former Georgia Tech coach] Bobby Cremins once told me,” Izzo said. “When you lose freshmen and sophomores, it eventually gets you because you have no guys to pass down the way it’s supposed to be. I thought I had skated by it, to be honest with you. But I don’t think [the juniors] really understand how to lead other people, how to drag other people.”
Hill has been the steadiest of the trio this season. But during the Spartans’ furious rally against the Sooners last Saturday, they all finally played with a passion and a purpose.
“The guys showed some heart,” Hill said.
“A lot of guys,” Torbert said, “started taking it personal. It might help us out a lot if we go play like we have a chip on our shoulders.”
But the Spartans hadn’t played with that attitude until that second half on Saturday. That’s another piece that helps explain the puzzle they have become. Anderson, a natural No. 2 guard who is playing the point, led them to victories in eight of their final 10 games last season. But he was undressed by Duke, never responded and–in a telling moment–plopped down on the bench, dropped his head and started pounding himself in the temples.
“I can’t see why all of a sudden you can’t dribble the ball, you can’t pass the ball,” Izzo has said to him.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Anderson has responded.
“He knows he’s doing it,” Izzo said. “But to give me a reason why, uh-uh.”
Paul Davis, Michigan State’s 6-11 center, had been similarly flaccid until he asserted himself against the Sooners. Davis spent the first three weeks of the season as the prime object of Izzo’s ire. Izzo urged Davis to be tougher. But Davis played like a big man–and not a pushover–only against Oklahoma.
Was Davis’ performance–and the second-half play of his teammates against the Sooners–a mirage or a new beginning? That’s the last riddle surrounding the Spartans.
“We know we still have a good team,” Hill said.
“If you’re waiting for this team to crack, to lay down and die, it’s not going to happen,” Izzo said. “We’re going to get better. That’s a guarantee.”
If that sounds like false bravado from another losing coach, it merely echoes a comment Izzo made 12 hours after watching Duke embarrass his team. Sitting in his office with his eyes blank and a forlorn look on his face, Izzo said, “This is more than a bump in the road, because some of it is [a question] of their character. A toughness thing.
“But we struggled at times last year and these guys have been through it before, so I’m trying to keep things in perspective. We have some guys who aren’t playing well who have done it before, so I still think this team can come back. I have all the confidence in the world they can do it.”
