The amount of travel the No. 24 Michigan State team has endured during a brutal early-season schedule is starting to take its toll.
The Spartans kicked off their season with a trip to Hawai’i for the Armed Forces Classic. Four days later, they were in New York City for the Champions Classic and, just five days after that, they were in the Bahamas for the Battle 4 Atlantis.
And Michigan State still has a trip to visit Duke left before the calendar hits December.
That’s a brutal schedule for anyone.
It’s an impossible schedule for a team that has four freshmen playing major roles and that lost two key big men to knee injuries.
And head coach Tom Izzo apologized to his team for what they’ve had to endure for the first two weeks of the season.
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“I actually apologized to my team,” he said. “And yet, I’ve always played a tough schedule. ... You know what? You can take it as an excuse, you can take it as the truth, I don’t give a damn. I’m telling you what I did. This ain’t on them. It’s on me.”
“We were moving the ball and really playing well I thought through the first half [in Thursday’s loss to Baylor], and we quit doing that. I just think we looked awfully tired. I can accept that that’s my fault, not theirs.”
Michigan State is 3-3 on the season and could reasonably find themselves 3-5 by Dec. 1st.