Michigan State basketball and UConn got together inside of the Breslin Center on Tuesday evening for a high-level exhibition matchup ahead of the 2026-27 season. In this matchup, the Huskies got the better of the Spartans, earning a 78-70 victory.
This was the best opportunity to date for Tom Izzo to gauge where his team is at and what he needs to do to get the Spartans ready for the regular season.
After the game, Michigan State's head man spoke to the media about the game with the Huskies:
- "Disappointing. We tried to play a lot of guys, it's hard to do that when half of them haven't played before. I thought our offense got awfully stagnant."
- "I was really disappointed with our physicality."
- "He (Anton Bonke) just didn't seem as ready to play. There's no clarity yet, we're 1.5 games in."
- "Jasiah Jervis has earned the fact to be coming off the bench early."
- "Cam Ward and Coen (Carr) are two veterans that have to step up."
- "Last year, I felt like we didn't deserve to be on the same floor, this year, I did."
- "Jasiah Jervis is the one I thought we have to keep getting shots for."
- "They (the crowd) did their job, we did not do our job. I told our players we let them (the crowd) down."
- "We could not have played a better team. This was the best exhibition game we could have played."
- "I'd rather play them than the Lakers."
- "Practice has been great. I see no entitlement, thinking they're better than they are. We got punched in the mouth today, though."
- "Jeremy has played as good as any player from junior to senior as I've seen, to be honest with you."
- "We have to do a better job figuring out who we can sub with who."
- "Some of the reasons we got our butt kicked our what we harped on. The film's gonna do more talking than the coach."
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This article originally appeared on Spartans Wire: Everything Tom Izzo said after exhibition loss to UConn