What a night Tuesday night was. The first half may have been a little sketchy, but Michigan State basketball pulled through in the second half en route to an 81-62 victory over Michigan<\/a>.<\/p>\n Typically there are a couple positive storylines after every MSU game, especially when the Spartans win. This game, however, had an abnormally large amount of exciting things happen. Especially for a program that hasn\u2019t been at their best in recent years, Tuesday night surely was a good night to just sit back and enjoy this team.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a look at all the positives that came from MSU\u2019s big win over Michigan that made this one of the best nights in recent program history.<\/p>\n The most obvious and biggest headline of the night was Izzo earning his 700th career win<\/a>. Izzo is the first Big Ten coach to achieve this at the same school, which really shows just how amazing this accomplishment is.<\/p>\n When you add this achievement to all of his other accomplishments, it really puts into perspective how great he is. A national championship, eight Final Fours, 10 Big Ten titles, and 25 straight NCAA tournament appearances combined with this is simply remarkable. Michigan State is very lucky to have\u00a0Izzo as its coach.<\/p>\n Now I know this isn\u2019t the greatest win over Michigan in history, but any win over the Wolverines is cause for celebration. Especially considering how MSU beat them by 19 points, it just makes last night that much better.<\/p>\n Think for one second how bad it would\u2019ve been if MSU had lost. Michigan State\u2019s tournament streak would have been in big trouble as the season would\u2019ve hit an all-time low. Thankfully that didn\u2019t happen and we get to celebrate another win over our biggest rival.<\/p>\n Now this was an accomplishment I didn\u2019t expect to see happen in this game. AJ Hoggard needed just 15 more points to reach 1,000 for his career<\/a>, and he did exactly that. Now I know AJ is more than capable of scoring this much in any game, but it\u2019s more likely for him to finish with less than that.<\/p>\n But Hoggard did what he needed to do, especially in the second half, to help lead the Spartans to a victory. Maybe this accomplishment and Izzo\u2019s would\u2019ve been better if they happened on different nights. But I prefer it this way because it makes this night that much better for everyone.<\/p>\n Jaden Akins<\/a> also had a monster game for the Spartans. He finished with a career-high 23 points<\/a> as well as three rebounds, assists, and steals. Not only did he have a great game statistically, but Akins kept MSU in the game throughout their first half struggles.<\/p>\n Michigan was on fire in the first half, but it was Jaden hitting multiple shots that kept the game close. Akins gave the rest of the team just enough time to get going which then led to the dominant second-half performance.<\/p>\n And the icing on the cake that was Tuesday\u2019s 19-point win is that it occurred on Tom Izzo\u2019s 69th birthday. Each of the above accomplishments is great on their own. Put them all together in one night and that makes for an amazing evening of basketball. But add in the fact that it was Izzo\u2019s birthday? That makes for one of the best nights in recent Michigan State basketball history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What a night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":13303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[217,190,189,504,211],"class_list":["post-13238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","tag-aj-hoggard","tag-michigan-state-basketball","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-news","tag-tom-izzo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}1. Tom Izzo\u2019s 700th win<\/h3>\n
2. Rivalry win<\/h3>\n
3. AJ Hoggard reached 1,000 career points<\/h3>\n
4. Jaden Akins career-high<\/h3>\n
5. Izzo\u2019s birthday<\/h3>\n