EAST LANSING — Tom Izzo is looking.

No, that’s not quite right. He’s searching ... for the soul of his team. Or at least for reasons why it didn’t start competing until the second half Tuesday night against Iowa.

That's no way to beat a solid team that had size, shooting and the sort of physicality Fran McCaffrey’s teams rarely have in Iowa City.

But let’s face it, Iowa outmuscled Michigan State in its own home, on its own court, in its own paint, where a former all-conference player from Valparaiso — Ben Krikke — brushed aside whoever Izzo tried attaching to him.

Yet another transfer tore up the Spartans and gave more red meat to those who pled for the program to add a center — or just a bigger power forward — to the roster in the offseason. Izzo may have thought his bigs — Mady Sissoko, Carson Cooper and Jaxson Kohler — would be enough, or at least take a leap from last year.

They haven’t.

Especially Sissoko, who is playing his way off the floor lately. That's even as Izzo remained defiant after the Hawkeyes beat MSU, 78-71, to end the Spartans' three-game winning streak.

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Sissoko played the first three minutes of the second half and then didn’t play again. Izzo wondered if he made the right call sitting him. He shouldn’t wonder, though, because he did. Xavier Booker, who played two stints in the first half, brought as much defensively — at least for a stretch — then didn’t play again, even though he showed he deserved a second-half look.

Izzo’s right: Booker needs to add strength to hold up against the increasingly older big men in the Big Ten. And while you can quibble with the minutes Booker has received this season, the freshman big struggled early this season against bulk.

He has looked better lately, especially on Tuesday against Iowa ... but he couldn't shut down Krikke either — the 6-foot-9, 230-pound forward scored 18 against MSU.

Kohler had the best stretch of minutes at the center spot Tuesday, as his game conditioning and feel are improving. When MSU made a run to cut a 16-point lead to six in the second half, Kohler’s defense — of all things — helped fuel it. But then he ran out of steam and couldn’t keep up either.

Center has been an issue all year, obviously, and it’s easy to blame that rotation for Tuesday's loss: Iowa had its way on the block, at the rim and, well, all over the paint — the Hawkeyes scored 40 points down there.

Don’t let the paint cover up the other issues, however. Iowa lit up MSU for 45 overall in the first half. Yet the Hawkeyes managed only 25 points in the second half until there were 2 minutes left and the Spartans had to foul.

In other words, MSU finally began to compete after halftime. They played defense. They played with urgency. They played the only way this team can with its thin margin for error.

Why wasn’t the focus there to start the game?

“I couldn’t tell you,” said A.J. Hoggard, who himself showed burst in the second half — especially toward the rim — that he didn’t in the first.

He was at a loss. So was Malik Hall, who has played so well lately. Hall had a theory, though: They were feeling hungover after beating Michigan in Ann Arbor.

That can’t be an excuse for such a veteran-led team. The short turnaround didn’t help, but Izzo has built his reputation, at least in part, on his teams' thriving on the one-day prep the NCAA tournament requires. So this doesn’t explain the lack of urgency either.

In theory — and in the standings — the Spartans should be rolling. But they weren't Tuesday night, and that’s inexcusable.

They're not on the NCAA tournament bubble just yet ... but they're also rapidly losing their shot at staying out of the 8-9 seed tossup game. And at avoiding a Thursday game in next month's Big Ten tournament.

There is much to play for, clearly. These Spartans know it.

But they didn’t show it Tuesday night, at home, winners of three in a row with momentum at their backs.

“It was all energy,” Izzo said. Or lack thereof.

He blamed himself: “I didn’t do a good enough job.”

Yes, having a set rotation at the five would help. Or a reliable defensive presence. And, yes, that’ll be an issue this season against teams with size and skill on the block (and one Izzo should’ve fixed during the offseason).

Yet despite roster shortcomings, MSU has enough on the perimeter to overcome this — when Hoggard and Jaden Akins and Tyson Walker are locked in to start the game, and when Hall is playing as he has lately, though “even he didn’t defend like he can,” Izzo lamented.

And so, Izzo is searching, trying to figure out the pieces of this team, trying to get it to compete like he knows it can, like it has shown it can.

“We haven’t had many games since we flat out didn’t bring it,” he said, “tonight we flat out didn’t bring it.”

Actually, they did.

It was just too late, when they were down 16. At that point, when they did their best to summon another second-half run — as they’ve done several times this season at Breslin — they couldn’t quite find it.

Izzo is right. That part is on him.

It’s on him, too, to find that missing soul in a hurry.

Time is slipping away, and with it the chance to set up any kind of March run at all.

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

Next up: Buckeyes

Matchup: Michigan State (17-10, 9-7) vs. Ohio State (15-11, 5-10).

Tipoff: 4 p.m. Sunday; Breslin Center, East Lansing.

TV/radio: CBS; WJR-AM (760).

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State basketball needs more than an answer in the middle