From The Locker Room
3/2/2002 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 2, 2002
Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo:
"I'm sorry to say, but Ishbia has been benched for those free throws at the end. I won't start him ever again. It was a game of many ups and downs. They say that basketball has a lot of swings to it and I think this kind of culminated it. At times, I think we played the best basketball we've played in a couple of years as far as moving the ball, shooting and even defending.
"You got to give Iowa a lot of credit. When they were down 20, they could have folded the tent. I think that is the kind of effort Steve (Alford) has been looking for. They deserve a lot credit because they in every way shape and form, they could have sold out and they didn't.
"Sometimes I'd like to give us credit because we battled back. We got the lead back up and they battled back. When they cut it to two, I guess you got to say that our team showed some character. Again, you got give them (Iowa) a lot of credit. They were on the road and did a great job."
"What can you say about Marcus's (Taylor) performance? It's not the 34 points, it's the 10-for-18 shooting, the nine assists and the two turnovers. He got his shot within the offense. I thought he did a phenomenal job of running our team, considering we had a couple other guys that did not play as well today."
Iowa head coach Steve Alford:
"We have not been a good team on the road, in particular coming out of stoppages of play. In difference to last year's team, I thought we were really good out of time-out situations. This year on the road, we have really struggled with that. We got it to a one-possession game with two points and ten minutes to go. All we talked about was in another two minutes getting a stop, so let's just rule those two minutes and win those two minutes. They went on an 11-2 run and I think that was the difference in the game."
On Marcus Taylor:
"I think he is a very good point guard. He had 34 points, nine assists, makes five threes and gets to the line 12 times and only turns it over two times. I thought he dominated the game today and it was a good lesson for our young point guards.
"He is very hard to guard. He comes off screens well. He understands the use of ball screens. We tried to mix up how we were going to guard the ball screens and he had an answer for all that.
"I thought in the second half we did the job we wanted to do on some of the other guys. We got a little careless in the first half with it, but Taylor was just consistently very very good throughout and we didn't have an answer for him."