Dec. 30, 2002

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Toledo Head Coach Stan Joplin:

"Obviously we are happy with the win tonight. I'm glad we won but at the same time I was a coach here for six years and I know a lot of people so it's just nice to come back here. The only reason I wanted to play Michigan State is because I thought it would be a big game to prepare us for the start of conference play and we knew they would give us that challenge. We knew we would have to play well coming in here and we did a lot of good things tonight."

"We run a lot of the same plays as State and play a similar style game. I would like to see our program become similar to one like you see here at Michigan State. We knew they would come out strong and fired up in the second half. We knew we had to play more aggressive and physical. I really have to tip my hat to my players for coming into an environment like this and getting a win. We hit a lot of key free throws down the stretch and stayed in the game. It's a big win for our guys."

Michigan State Head Coach Tom Izzo:

"There's really no surprise here today. There are a lot of reasons that I want to get on my team, but Toledo outplayed us. They outshot us and outworked us and I thought we got outcoached. So that kind of takes care off all four factors. I think you've got to give Toledo a lot of credit. The way they played - it really took us out of things. We looked very slow and we didn't rebound very well at all. We turned the ball over a lot and we didn't guard them at all. That's just not us at all. Some of my best defensive players had some of their worst nights. The better team won tonight. I want you to understand that - the better team won tonight. They outplayed us in just about every phase. We tried a phony comeback and lost. We didn't deserve to win at the end."

"We have no rotations. Some of it is my fault, because I'll go with loyalties and tonight I did that a little bit too much. Some of it is injury's fault, some of it is youth's fault and some of it is player's fault. I have to take most of the blame, because we don't have certain rotations. Like I said, some of our best defensive players didn't play tonight, so I had to go with some really strange lineups in there because we were scrambling to get back. I've said we're not playing well enough and now I think you understand what I mean. We're not playing clean, consistently. Good basketball has not been played by this team."