Tom Izzo wished there could have been people there to see his first win at Duke.
The Cameron Crazies. Michigan State fans. Heck, he even lamented the missing media.
But …
“I know one thing,” Izzo said Tuesday night from Durham, North Carolina, “I’m not gonna put this as an asterisk.”
For the second time in 20 months, Izzo and the Spartans did what for so long had seemed impossible: beat Mike Krzyzewski and Duke. This time, for the first time in four tries, at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
No. 12 MSU rode its waves of mistakes and big runs, used lockdown defense and balanced scoring, then withstood a late flurry from the eighth-ranked Blue Devils to emerge from the Champions Classic with a 75-69 victory.
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Izzo has a 3-12 record against Krzyzewski, as MSU (3-0) notched its first win over Duke (1-1) in four meetings in the Champions Classic.
The Spartans return home knowing they can compete with – and beat – any team in the country right now.
“I just asked my guys and the coaching staff just to keep our composure. Everybody’s in a fight,” said junior Aaron Henry, who scored 10 of his 14 points in the first half. “If you get hit the first couple times, you gotta know how to respond. Those are those are where the champions stand. All players and all teams get hit, but it’s how you respond and how you sustain yourself in the fight. And I felt like we did a good job of that.”
Rocket Watts scored 20 points, and Henry played a versatile game with five assists, five rebounds, three steals and all three of MSU’s blocks to offset his 7 of 21 shooting night. Sophomore Julius Marble had 12 points in 12 minutes on 5 of 5 shooting, and Joey Hauser and Malik Hall each had double-doubles combining for 21 points and 20 rebounds.
MSU shook off a slow start to put a stranglehold defensively on the Blue Devils. The Spartans’ length and athletic ability on defense bothered Duke all night, particularly on the perimeter. The Spartans forced 12 turnovers with six steals, and won the rebounding battle, 46-40. They kept Duke to 5 of 23 shooting from 3-point range and 20 of 62 (32.3%) overall.
[ Michigan State basketball greats, fans celebrate impressive win over Duke ]
“Hopefully this will give some of our guys the confidence to know that, right now, we’re making a statement: Our defense is traveling,” Izzo said. “I don’t think we were as good as we were for 30 minutes of that Notre Dame game. This was a harder team to cover – they have guards that were jet-quick, their bigs could shoot 3s. … We had to play team basketball, we had to shrink the court.”
That defense was a big reason Watts made his first start of the season. The sophomore took over for Foster Loyer at point guard and went 7 of 16 despite admittedly playing out of control early.
The Spartans opened sluggish and sloppy, missing seven of their first eight shots and turning the ball over three times as Duke raced to a 13-3 lead. However, seven of the Blue Devils’ points came at the free-throw line as MSU had five fouls in the first 4:20.
But ironically on many levels, it was Loyer’s defense off the bench in taking charges on back-to-back Duke possessions that swung momentum. The Spartans then slowly started scoring, particularly after Malik Hall made a layup to cut the deficit to three points and took a nasty fall after being pushed in the back by Duke’s Joey Baker, who was called for a flagrant foul.
From that point, MSU made 10 of 16 shots to close the half.
“At first, we just kept taking bad shots and forcing things,” Marble said. “Coach was telling us to get to the basket and run our offense and all that stuff. So that’s what we did.”
Trailing 25-18, the Spartans went on a 19-6 run with Watts hitting a pair of jumpers to start it, and Loyer’s 3-pointer tying the game at 29. Marble’s spin move layup gave them their first lead, then his deep jumper from the corner after two Hall free throws and a Henry jumper gave MSU a lead it would not relinquish.
“They are able to play at a consistently high level because of their experience and depth is better than we are right now,” Krzyzewski said. “We were playing better than the score for the first 15 minutes, and there wasn’t a separation that our intensity had created.That’s the first time we’ve played a game like that. It’s not the first time those guys have ever played a game like that, so they took advantage of that.”
Emerging from halftime with a 37-33 lead, the Spartans took command with a 17-5 burst and built a 16-point cushion with 12-plus minutes left.
Duke, which was 1 of 15 from beyond the arc when MSU had its big lead, chipped away and eventually cut it to eight on a 3-pointer from Jeremy Roach with 36.3 seconds left and a banked-in 3 from Matthew Hurt with 21 seconds remaining. Henry got called for traveling with 19.2 seconds left and committed a foul with 17.9 to play, after which Jalen Johnson made 1 of 2 free throws.
Hall and Watts both hit a pair of free throws to seal the win, giving Izzo and the Spartans a marquee victory as they return home to host Detroit Mercy at 5 p.m. Friday at Breslin Center.
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“Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather win than lose,” Izzo said. “I’m gonna tell you something – I’m gonna learn a lot on the way home on this airplane, because we made so many mistakes tonight. And I’m sure they did too, but we did make a lot of mistakes. But it’s a lot easier as a coach to learn with a win under your belt.
“I’ve played a lot of these games, and it might seem to you that I’ve accepted, ‘OK, we got beat, but we’re going to get better.’ I’d rather win some of them early and get better, too.”
Contact Chris Solari: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari. Read more on the Michigan State Spartans and sign up for our Spartans newsletter.
