MSU streaks by Alcorn State 118-60 in an 81-possession game. Official box score.
When your back-up point guard has 11 assists, you know it’s been a very long night for your opponent.
Michigan State dominated this game in every way possible:
Most indicative of the way this game was played, though, are the following numbers:
- MSU recorded 35 assists on 44 made field goals (79.5%).
- Alcorn State recorded 4 assists on 22 made field goals (16.3%).
Three of the Braves’ assists were registered by their star, Troy Jackson, meaning the other 12 players who saw the floor for Alcorn State registered just one assist collectively. All 13 Braves player combined for just one steal and nary a blocked shot. They were simply overmatched by MSU’s talent, depth, and relentlessness. It’s not often I feel genuine sympathy for a Spartan opponent, but I did tonight.
Alcorn State did manage to keep it close for the first seven minutes. The actually held a 13-12 lead at the 13:37 mark. For the second consecutive game, I thought MSU came out a little sluggish on defense, allowing too many clean looks from the perimeter. But it’s obviously hard to knock the overall defensive performance tonight.
On offense, Chris Allen led the way with 20 points on 4-5 three-point shooting. He continues to be very aggressive in looking for his shot, which is a very good thing.
Kalin Lucas had 16 points and posted 8 assists vs. zero turnovers. His jumpshot looked better in this game (2-4 from 3-point range), but his pull-up game continues to be missing in action.
Fifteen players scored for MSU tonight (all 15 who played), so I could run down player highlights for quite a while. I won’t do that, but I will note that Draymond Green posted his first double-digit scoring game as a Spartan. He had 10 points on 4-4 FG shooting to go with 7 rebounds in 13 minutes of play.
And, as noted at the start, Korie Lucious had his first double-digit assist game at MSU. In transition, at least, I think he’s actually a better passer than Lucas is.
All signs pointed to a blow-out going into this one, and our Spartans didn’t disappoint. This was the highest scoring output by the team during the Tom Izzo era–beating the 114-point game against Michigan in 2000–and ties for the second highest output in the program’s history. (The all-time record is a 121-point performance against Morehead State in 1992.)
They’ll look to keep the high-octane offense going against The Citadel on Wednesday night at 8:00 (BTN) and hopefully carry some it over into next Saturday’s match-up with #6 Texas in Houston.
P.S. I’d say this was a good game for Trey Zeigler to be in attendance.
P.P.S. I swear I didn’t look at Izzo’s post-game comments before I cited the 35-assists-on-45-baskets statistic.
Wasn’t there a side bet on when Mike Kebler made his first appearance? 4:55 to go in the game, for those who were counting.
As was covered already, there were lots of assists, lots of unselfish play, lots of good chemistry and cohesion on display last night. Allen looked great, and it’s encouraging to see him aggressively going after his shot. He needs to have no memory, and he’s acting more like he doesn’t. Lucas is looking better too, though I’m still waiting for some more of that one-on-one explosiveness we saw last year coming off the bench.
There were two things that frustrated me last night, and only one of which had anything to do with this game. When this team plays with confidence, it is very dangerous. Last night was the most confident they’ve played this year. Shots were falling, and when they weren’t our guys kept firing on all cylinders as if they were. Now, you have to keep the quality of our opponent in mind while making such an observation, but if this team could play with last night’s confidence all the time, we’d see drastically different results. We wouldn’t see Bradley hanging around for much of the first half. We wouldn’t see a scare in Fort Wayne. We wouldn’t have seen a first round loss in the Old Spice Classic, and though we surely would have lost by double digits, it wouldn’t have been by 35 to a powerful UNC team in Detroit. Again, you always have to consider your competition and normalize for that variable, but exuding that same intensity and confidence as last night is not only possible but necessary to push through to that very top tier of basketball programs. This team is good. They just need to be convinced of it and play like it, instead of playing down to the level of their opponents and getting themselves into trouble. Last night they showed they’re more than capable of avoiding that.
The second thing that frustrated me was the number of games the Spartans have played this year. The BTN flashed conference “standings” and our guys were in second-to-last place before their game was finished. Now, two losses will do that to you early in the season, but last night was our eighth game, where other conference foes had played 10 and 11 games already. Didn’t MSU used to play more games than most in our conference? Sure, it may result in some tired legs and performances early on, but that extra exposure and conditioning goes a long way later in the season. Wasn’t it 2006 or 2007 when State played the most games in November (or December, or both) that they’d ever played? What happened this year? I remember wondering this Thanksgiving weekend when we went in 2-0, and other teams had played five or six games already.
You know your team is passing well when Gray is distributing the ball more like Andre Hutson and less like a guy who went late into December last year without an assist. Roe’s passing skills are stellar, the play where he got in the post, was double teamed, but calmly looked at three different guys, was outstanding.
As for confidence, I’ve noticed the past two years a huge difference between home and road confidence. Now I understand that teams are always going to be more confident at home, but it seems like we’ve hit extremes on both ends. At home, we play like we think could beat anyone in the country, on the road, we revert to being tentative and slow. With one more home game before four straight away from home, that’s the thing we need to work on.
Regarding the number of games, my only two theories are
1. we play Kansas in January, so we will pick up one more out of league game “later” than other teams
2. Our exempt tournament (old Spice) was three games, a lot teams play in four game tournaments (all the New York ones). put those together and we might be two games down, plus some schools have finals this week and may not play, while we get Citadel, I’m guessing at the end of the year it will all balance out.
It does seem like they have not played that many games. Am I wrong to say I remember about 13-15 games by the start of the big ten season most years. tyhis year, they will be at 11.
One thing to worry about after this historic blow out? foul shooting, which was again pretty dreadful. Roe and Morgan in particular, just don’t look good at the line, and that negates the advantage MSU will have all year — they get to the line a lot.
Hubert: Until last year, the Big Ten schedule was only 16 games. Now it’s 18. So that accounts for some of it – Big Ten play is starting earlier.