Overheard in the Michigan State locker room: Sharp elbows, an earned win vs. Indiana
EAST LANSING – In one of its most emotional environments of the season, Michigan State showed a bit of everything: a comeback rally, hot shooting, strong defense, and even some teammate-on-teammate elbows.
The Spartans beat Indiana, 80-65, on Tuesday night for one of its biggest wins of the season.
Here are some notable quotes about Michigan State’s win:
“I feel like every time a shot goes up and it goes in the building is crazy. It’s one of the best feelings to do, so I guess you just want to keep doing it.”
— Tyson Walker on his five 3-pointers
“Shoot to get hot, shoot to stay hot. Just keep putting them up.”
— Walker on overcoming four straight misses to open the game
“Tyson was out of his mind there in a couple of those shots. I told him after, he missed that layup late, I said you must have to be 30 feet from the basket to make a shot
— Tom Izzo on Walker’s performance
“I was appreciative that I’m at Michigan State. I wish I could have ran up to that top row and thanked the people that were there. I just looked around, that’s all I did was look around, and all the bads at times with this job, it was one of those moments where I just said ‘I’m a lucky guy.’
— Izzo on his thoughts during the pregame ceremonies
“Here’s one two-hour period where maybe they forgot about all the things that they had to deal with. They got a chance to enjoy and that’s what sports can sometimes do. It can’t take away all the pain, but it’s like a little aspirin maybe for a couple of hours.”
— Izzo
“I was pissed because that was my rebound. I thought it was (Trayce) Jackson-Davis or something, boxing out. Those are some sharp elbows, you can imagine.”
— Joey Hauser on being elbowed in the face by Mady Sissoko in the second half while going for a rebound
“His rebound where he just absolutely annihilated Joey, it was awesome. I think Joey will have a little black eye, that’ll be pretty cool.”
— Izzo on Sissoko’s rebound
“It felt good to come here and have that student support and just bring Spartan nation together as a whole. That’s important I think for our whole university and our whole community.”
— Malik Hall on the environment
“We just cranked up. Our defense got better, our rebounding got better and our ball movement got better.”
— Izzo on his team’s improvement
“I’d way that we earned the win. There was no luck, we earned the win.”
— Izzo
