AJ Hoggard reaches career milestone vs. Northwestern

AJ Hoggard reached a career assists milestone in the Spartans’ loss to Northwestern on Sunday night in Evanston.

A lot went wrong in Michigan State’s 88-74 loss to Northwestern on Sunday night. Not many players played well and Northwestern took advantage of a sloppy Michigan State team. However, one major accomplishment was reached by AJ Hoggard during this one.

AJ Hoggard reaches 500 career assists

AJ Hoggard reached 500 career assists during Sunday’s loss to Northwestern. I’m sure we all would’ve loved to celebrate this accomplishment after a win, but AJ deserves a lot of praise for reaching this milestone regardless.

500 career assists for @ajhoggard3 🟢⚪️ pic.twitter.com/NitjSB0XVw

— Michigan State Men's Basketball (@MSU_Basketball) January 8, 2024

AJ is the 10th Spartan in program history to reach the 500 assists mark. Cassius Winston leads the program, and Big Ten, with 890 and Mateen Cleaves comes in at No. 2 with 816. AJ also just passed Magic Jonson, who ended his two-year MSU career with 491.

Hoggard does have a chance to catch a few more Spartans before the season is over. Travis Walton sits at 555 and Kalin Lucas finished with 558, so they are both in reach this year. He could catch a few other former Spartans as well, but I think passing Walton and Lucas to finish eighth in program history is likely where he’ll end the season.

He is also only the 45th player in Big Ten history to reach 500 assists as well. Can we appreciate for one second that MSU has 10 (22 percent) of the total players to reach this milestone in the conference? That’s extremely impressive.

AJ Hoggard’s season in review

Hoggard is having a solid season so far, averaging 11.3 points, 5.1 assists, and 3.2 rebounds per game. All three of these numbers are slightly under his career-high averages from last season, but he still has plenty of time to improve on these.

On Sunday night, AJ finished with eight assists in the loss to Northwestern. This marks his fifth game this season in which he had at least seven assists. His best, when it comes to assists, came against Stony Brook when both he and Jeremy Fears finished with 10 assists.

The senior point guard had a slow start to this season, but he has really turned it around and is playing some high-level basketball. Besides Tyson Walker, Hoggard, in my opinion, has become the most reliable player on this team.

Congrats on this accomplishment, AJ.