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.
And this wasn’t a first-couple-minutes, shake-off-the-rust kind of thing. This was 3:17 left in the first half. Rutgers – a team that came in 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.