Offensive blunders of historic proportion in MSU's 43-36 defeat

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Iowa City, Iowa — Season-low shooting percentage. One made free throw. An Izzo-era-low point total.

Can it only get better from here?

In the MSU men’s basketball team’s first conference road game of the season, the No. 6 Spartans (14-2 overall, 2-1 Big Ten) were stunned by the Iowa Hawkeyes (8-9, 1-3) in a 43-36 upset at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

MSU head coach Tom Izzo didn’t try too hard to refrain from an “I told you so” afterward, having said more than once this season that his squad may not be prepared to go on the road in the conference and win.

“It’s discouraging, our leadership,” Izzo said. “We just were out of it the whole night.”

But senior center Drew Naymick — who’s been a part of the program for five years — said he knows that the conference season is young and MSU has plenty of time to make up for the loss.

“The good thing is our destiny is still in our hands,” he said. “We can bounce back from this.”

The MSU players were dejected as the clock reached zero on a night that featured 30 percent shooting, 18 turnovers and a 10-minute scoring drought.

It was the program’s fewest points scored since 1952, when MSU lost 50-36 to U-M, and the fewest in Izzo’s 13 years as Spartans head coach.

“We’re going to have to fight,” senior guard Drew Neitzel said.

“We’re backed into a corner. We lost a game we probably shouldn’t have lost, but the better team won tonight so we’ve got to give Iowa credit,” he said.

“But we’re just going to have to come back and keep fighting. We’re capable of that.”

Welcome to the Big Ten

Iowa head coach Todd Lickliter finally got his first Big Ten win.

After starting the conference campaign 0-3, he notched his first league win.

Iowa has had arguably the toughest early conference schedule, which included games versus Indiana and MSU and at Wisconsin and Ohio State.

MSU was the highest-ranked team Lickliter has defeated his career.

“We were awfully down after Wednesday,” Lickliter said of his team’s 31-point trouncing courtesy of Ohio State.

“Nobody liked that. You basically have two things you can do,” he said.

“Our guys chose the right thing. They came back and prepared well and competed.”

Before coming to Iowa this season, Lickliter was named the 2006-07 Division I Coach of the Year by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and he posted a 131-61 record in six seasons at Butler University.

Swat team

One of the lone positives to take from the loss for the Spartans was a personal milestone for Naymick.

A block with 13:36 remaining in the first half made Naymick the all-time leader in career blocks at MSU. He began the game tied with Matt Steigenga at 97 blocks. Steigenga played for the Spartans from 1988-92.

“It’s nice, but we came down here to get a ‘W,’” Naymick said. “We didn’t get it done.”

He finished the game with four rebounds, one block and no points in 19 minutes of play.

The Spartans return home at 7 p.m. Tuesday to take on Ohio State (12-4, 3-1).

The Buckeyes had their 19-game Big Ten winning streak snapped Saturday when they lost to Purdue, 75-68.

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