Tom Izzo Second Quotations

I thought Iowa played very solid. In the second half, they played much better defensively.

I feel real comfortable that who we are playing and who we could play does not throw up any red flags. I'm looking at it like I'm definitely packing for two days the first weekend, and then I'm not going on spring break the second weekend. There's no plans in the foreseeable future, so I'm planning on playing some basketball.

He might be only the second kid (after Jason Richardson) I would advise to do that, just because, that way, there'd be no questions unanswered.

I was proud of my team, staff and assistant coaches, it was a heck of a job. They were a good basketball team and put more pressure on us than Wisconsin. Our shooting and rebounding was very good, and it helps when we only turn the ball over three times in the second half.

I think the first five shots we took were 3s, but our inside guys weren't doing the things (we needed). In the second half, we simplified it, (we asked) the guys in the post to be passers and pickers, and that probably helped us some.

I'm more disappointed how we played in the first half. It kind of set the tone for the game. In the second half, we probably outplayed them in every facet of the game. ... We just didn't execute in the last three minutes.

There were some bright spots. I think in the second half we played better. Our defense was better. They turned the ball over and we scored a lot on that.

Shannon (Brown) was very unselfish today and Maurice (Ager) came to me at halftime and said, 'I made some good shots in the first half and in the second half I'm going to go out there and put them down.' That to me is a great feeling knowing that the relationship between the coaches and the players is that confident.

We're going to hone in 95 percent of our time on George Mason. If you don't win the first one, you don't get to the second one. But if you get to the second one and you're not prepared and you don't get out of the weekend, I don't feel like that's where Michigan State is right now.

I think you have to give George Mason a lot of credit. They took it to us early, kicked our butts inside and shot 70 percent on us with eight or nine minutes to go in the second half. ... I've got to say that in my nine years, this is one of the more disappointing evenings I've had in this job.

In the first half, it seemed like most of the plays we ran went down, and we held them on 3-point shots after their first couple shots right at the beginning - and we rebounded the ball a lot. In the second half, we got the lead and played well enough, but there were a couple of stretches that wore us down a little bit.

I'm definitely packing for two days for the first weekend, and then I'm not going on spring break the second weekend. I plan on playing some basketball.

I look at the stats and kind of see a different game than I watched. I didn't really like the game I watched, to be honest with you. But the stats say we did some things well. And I was very proud of Maurice Ager and Paul Davis at halftime. They vowed we'd be better defensively in the second half, and we were.