On Monday night, Michigan State basketball opened its season with a resounding win over Quinnipiac of the newly rebranded Metro Conference. It was noted by many that Quinnipiac head coach Tom Pecora was a great personality and a class act heading into the matchup (he had a great line about sending Izzo an Italian dinner when the game was scheduled
), and that was definitely seen in his post-game press conference, where he was gracious and charismatic.Below, you can see what Pecora had to say about the Spartans and the lopsided game:
- On the importance of a game like this: "I think for our young guys to put them in this kind of environment and when we recruit guys to Quinnipiac, we talk to them about how we're going to go out, we're going to try to play the best teams in the country when we can get those games, and that's one of the reasons why they come."
- On MSU's physicality: "You know, it's the old Mike Tyson line. Everyone's got a plan until they get hit... And as a young player, 'Yeah. Yeah. They're going to be physical. Yeah...' And the crazy thing too is like, I tried to explain to them, they're not dirty; they're physical. And when you're young and out of high school, you definitely have never played in an environment like that. I was kidding around with my assistants, and I was a hundred years ago when I was a young teenager. You'd hang around the schoolyard, and we would play, then the older guys would come to play. They tore us off the court in the summer at six o'clock, right? And then once in a while they'd need one, and you would be there dying to get in that game. And then you would realize the basketball is a contact sport. You know, there's a way of doing it properly and no one does it better than Michigan State."
- On MSU: "Everyone knows their ability to play physical, solid defense and then rebound... So, I mean, they're really good, and there's a reason why they're ranked where they are."
- On MSU's depth: "One thing I always look for when I watch a team like this, when you see a young man like that come off the bench and play that way - he's pissed he's not starting. You want your guys who are coming off the bench to be, hey, I'm going to take somebody's spot up here and to have that level of competition. But they have great depth, and I think that's necessary with the pace that they play at and with the physicality that they play at."
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This article
originally appeared on Spartans Wire: What Quinnipiac coach Tom Pecora said about Michigan State after loss
