Brad Underwood: Michigan State basketball did “nothing” to stop Kasparas Jakucionis

Sunday afternoon featured not only a clash of two of the best teams in college basketball but also two of the best coaches in the sport. Brad Underwood and Tom Izzo are two of the best at what they do and they’re also some of the best when it comes to quote material.

If you know anything about Underwood and Izzo, you’ll know they don’t hold back when they talk to the media. They say whatever is on their mind.

That remained true after Sunday’s game as Izzo had some praise for the Illini and touted them as the best team in the conference and Underwood had something more interesting and controversial to say.

“MSU did nothing defensively to stop Kasparas Jakucionis,” said Underwood.

That statement had a lot of fans scratching their heads because Jakucionis was just 1-for-3 from the floor with three points and three assists in nine minutes. He fouled out in those nine minutes, playing a little more aggressively with 3-4 fouls than he should have. You’ll see a lot of Illinois fans complaining today about officiating, but Michigan State attacked the star Illini player and it paid off. Only one foul was truly questionable.

But to say Michigan State did “nothing” to stop Jakucionis is just wild.

I get that he was effective when he was in there with his passing and just drawing attention from defenders, but to say Michigan State did “nothing” to stop Jakucionis is just incorrect. They forced him into a couple of bad shots and put him into some bad situations. He did have a nice stretch in the second half when he finally saw the floor again when he was responsible for a quick 5-0 run before fouling out. Michigan State did enough to make sure he didn’t have a game-changing impact.

Brad Underwood needs to give MSU more credit because it did what no team has done this year.