The Spartans’ five-game winning streak came to a crashing end Sunday night. Michigan State basketball<\/a> went to Northwestern and suffered its first loss of the new year, 88-74.<\/p>\n This game was tough to watch because we just didn\u2019t look like the same team from the past few games. It\u2019s hard to have any takeaways from a game like this because you know a performance like this is an outlier. But a few things still stood out to me from this tough loss.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the one positive.<\/p>\n One sign of a superstar is that they play well every single night, even on your team\u2019s worst night. Tyson Walker<\/a> proved he\u2019s a superstar on Sunday night after another impressive performance.<\/p>\n Tyson did what he does and scored 27 points for the Spartans tonight. He also added three rebounds and three assists as well. All three of these stats are above his season averages.<\/p>\n Walker also accomplished this while still being very efficient from the field. He was 10-for-18 overall and 4-for-7 from beyond the arc, including a blistering 3-for-3 start. Sometimes stars pad their stats in these games but aren\u2019t efficient shooting the ball, but that wasn\u2019t the case with Walker.<\/p>\n So on a night when our team and a lot of individuals struggled, Walker still played very well.<\/p>\n Rough games are expected from underclassmen from time to time, especially freshmen. If Coen Carr<\/a> has an off night it\u2019s easier to shrug it off because he’s still getting used to college basketball. You don\u2019t however expect \u201coff\u201d nights from upperclassmen.<\/p>\n I put \u201coff\u201d in quotation marks above because two of the Spartans’ upperclassmen essentially didn\u2019t show up. Malik Hall\u2019s<\/a> only stats that he accumulated were two turnovers and one foul. That\u2019s right, he had zero points, assists, rebounds, steals, or blocks. That\u2019s honestly impressive to do something like that but for all the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n1. Tyson Walker is still Tyson Walker<\/h3>\n
2. Lack of upperclassmen leadership<\/h3>\n