EAST LANSING, Mich. — Everybody wanted to take the blame when it was over.
Tom Izzo went first, pounding the podium at one point to emphasize the lethargic start and passive play — the things that he felt led to No. 17 Michigan State's 70-62 loss to No. 14 Wisconsin at the Breslin Center on Tuesday night — were a reflection on the Spartans' head coach.
"I'm putting it all on me, I really am," Izzo said. "I have to do a better job. Team doesn't play with toughness and tenacity, that falls on my shoulders."
Then came Joey Hauser, peering down at a stat sheet that showed only one starter scoring in double figures as Michigan State (17-6 overall, 8-4 Big Ten) dropped its second in a row to fall back in the Big Ten title race.
"This is just as much on us as it is the coaches," Hauser insisted.
Gabe Brown was next, and took it even more personally, when asked about the Spartans' low-energy display early in this midwinter slog against a Wisconsin team they'd blitzed in Madison a few weeks ago.
"I mean, coaches always take blame," said Brown, who followed up a 20-point outing at Rutgers with just seven points Tuesday. "But I take full blame for all that, because I'm a captain and that's one of my jobs."
If only the Spartans could share the ball as well as the blame, though. Or if there was a go-to player on offense — someone even remotely like Wisconsin's Johnny Davis, who finished with a game-high 25 points Tuesday — that could ease Izzo's concerns about toughness by making it tough on opposing defenses with any consistency.
Because those are the issues confounding this Michigan State team just as much — if not more — than the fumbled rebounds or the 50-50 balls that Wisconsin seemed to monopolize in critical stretches.
And those are the issues Izzo and his staff still are going to have to solve, once they're done hammering home another lesson about what it means to play with intensity for 40 minutes.
"We gotta figure out how we're gonna get a little tougher," Izzo said. "I haven't had many teams I've had to worry about that with, but I gotta worry about that with this team. I mean, you saw it. You watched it."
And, yes, it's glaring at times on nights like this, when a physically stronger team like Wisconsin grabs a game in the first half and refuses to let go. These Badgers (19-4, 10-2) aren't nearly as good as their record implies. Yet they're tough enough to win a game like this on the road if you let them.
And Izzo's team remains far too giving, at this point, to suit their coach, or to stay in the title chase with the likes of Purdue and Illinois and, perhaps, Wisconsin. (Don't count out Ohio State, either.)
Not with point-guard play like they got Tuesday, as Tyson Walker got sped up and eventually spun himself out of the lineup with one point and a lone assist in 14 minutes. His night ended after a brutal turnover with 5:29 to play that stalled a Michigan State rally.
And not with A.J. Hoggard committing a few turnovers of his own when he wasn't forcing up shots his team didn't need him to take. Hoggard's seven attempts in the second half were as many as Brown and Max Christie had combined, and that's not a winning recipe, even in a rock fight like this.
Michigan State started off 4-for-20 from the field and had more turnovers than made field goals in the first half — Marcus Bingham Jr. and Hauser were the only starters with a bucket. Brown didn't knock down a shot until 5 minutes into the second half. Christie's first make didn't come until 5 minutes after that.
And while Greg Gard's team deserves some of the credit for that, Izzo wasn't about to let the Badgers take all of it.
Asked about Brown getting only five shot attempts in the game, a few days after he went 6-for-7 from three-point range, Izzo grumbled, "They did a good job covering him. But we did a good job of letting them cover him."
He was talking mostly about the Spartans' haphazard response to the Badgers' ball-screen defense, which had both point guards looking lost, at times. And actually led Izzo to play without either for a stretch, handing the primary ballhandling duties to Christie, the freshman wing who finished with eight points on eight shots in 33 minutes.
"We had to put him at the point some because of some problems we were having," Izzo said. "He hasn't played there much, so in fairness to him, that was probably a desperation move on my part. I'm not saying it didn't work, but it didn't work great."
Not much did in this one, other than a brief flourish from Bingham at the end of the first half, and a second-half run keyed by Malik Hall's aggressive play.
The good news is they'll have more opportunities to redeem themselves in the next few weeks, starting with Saturday's home game against Indiana.
But Izzo's right when he says "we're a good team that needs to become a great team to survive." And outings like Tuesday night are a reminder of just how tough that leap will be for this group.
