PISCATAWAY, N.J. – He just stood there.
Tom Izzo took a moment to stare into space Wednesday night at Rutgers Athletic Center. His senior star was out of sorts. His defense was handing out lay-ups like candy. He couldn’t find anyone at the power forward position to maintain focus on that end of the floor.
His team was losing to Rutgers.
“I was just so disappointed,” Izzo said later.
And this wasn’t a first-couple-minutes, shake-off-the-rust kind of thing. This was with 3:17 left in the first half. Rutgers — a team that entered 6-23 overall, 0-16 in the Big Ten and fresh off a 39-point loss to Northwestern — had connected on 15 of its first 21 shots and led, 36-34.