Spartan’s win streak up to 13
The Spartans took care of business in East Lansing Tuesday night by basically maintaining a twenty point lead throughout.
There was a lot that went right for MSU in this game. The game started off pretty ugly with both teams turning the ball over and throwing up some bricks. Once the Spartans stopped turning it over they took over the game. The first half definitely had some sloppy half court offense but the Spartan rebounding and defense made up for it. Holloman caught fire from behind the arc at the end of the first half and put the Spartans up by twenty going into the half.
The second half was a lot of the same as MSU dominated the boards and almost doubled up Minnesota. The defensive rebounding was pushing the tempo and allowing MSU to continue playing their style of pushing the ball and controlling the fast break points. Dawson Garcia got hot for the Gophers and he’s been hot for their three game win streak. Good news is, he was the only one. MSU defense was swallowing up players and forcing some ill advised shots. It’s always a good sign when the deep bench gets out for some extended minutes allowing Teng to get four rebounds in the stat column.
Let’s get into the likes and dislikes of lucky thirteen.
Three things I liked:
- Assists. The way this team moves the ball around, and relatively low in the turnover column compared to many teams in the past, is quite impressive. Fears has been a bit underrated in his ability to move the ball around and Richardson has been doing just as well. The two of them combined for 14 assists and 1 turnover. One of my favorites came toward the very end of the game when Richardson found Booker with about 1 second left on the shot clock. The patience and selfless play has been really fun to watch and gives us a lot to look forward to in the coming months.
- Carson Cooper. Loved seeing Cooper clean up around the rim and finish things. Cooper has been gaining some consistency and playing clean. 21 minutes with 11 rebounds and 0 fouls. I’ll take that stat line every day. Cooper seems to have gained a bit of confidence and seems to understand his role. The guards trust him to clean up and it has been working.
- Rebounding. Rebounding has always been a strong Izzo team trait. 40 boards in this game kept Minnesota from getting any easy second chance points. There was a great possession in the first half where MSU had three offensive boards in a row. Considering the offense was not great in this game, the rebounding became a big reason MSU maintained the twenty point lead throughout the second half.
Three things I disliked:
- Offense. The offense was not good. Yes, the ball movement and assists were great but there were some poor shots, and lost movement on the perimeter. Credit some of this to Gopher defense but MSU has got to improve on the offensive scheme.
- Fidler. Frankie had been on a small tear recently putting out some great stat lines but tonight was not one of them. He just had a bad game. Everyone has them, but this one felt a little too bad. Even going as far as a basket interference on a beautiful play by Fears. Hopefully this was just an enigma game and Frankie finds his headband magic again.
- Kohler. This may be more of a dislike on the Izzo call of not playing him. Kohler had an early hot hand but did get into some foul trouble. He rebounded well but I would of liked to see him out there more, especially since he seemed to be feeling it a bit and was 50% beyond the arc. The beauty of this team is the ability to ride the hot hand and the depth and trust of everyone. With the lead as it was, I was curious as to why we just didn’t get some more Kohler.
MSU officially closed out January like it did December with nothing but wins. The tough part of the schedule is coming and as Izzo has said from the start, “It will take a couple of losses to win this conference.” We all hope that the streak continues, but a tough trip out west is on the horizon. Go Green!