Michigan State basketball<\/a> is coming off a horrendous 60-57 loss to Ohio State<\/a> at home on Sunday. There weren\u2019t many good takeaways from this game, but one thing that stands out to me is Tyson Walker. The Spartan star has been lights out for most of the season, but he has been struggling of late.<\/p>\n Don’t get me wrong, he is still MSU\u2019s best player and has been playing well. But he hasn\u2019t been playing up to the standards we have come to expect from him. Walker has failed to hit 20 points in five straight games now, and he\u2019s also been inefficient from the field as well. Only one of his last four games has he been better than 20 percent from the 3-point line. Tyson also hasn\u2019t shot 50 percent from the field in six straight games.<\/p>\n So what\u2019s going on that could have caused this recent decrease in play. What\u2019s wrong with Tyson?<\/p>\n Tyson has been dealing with a groin injury<\/a> for what feels like half of the season at this point. It didn\u2019t seem to impact him much initially, but maybe it has recently. Tom Izzo even held Tyson out of practice<\/a> for a day about three weeks ago.<\/p>\n Walker hasn\u2019t missed any games or seen a restriction in his minutes, so this injury must not be that bad. But it might still be something he\u2019s dealing with that could be a factor in his recent play.<\/p>\n I think this is another thing likely impacting Tyson\u2019s productivity. As the season has gone on, it\u2019s become more and more clear that Walker is most of MSU\u2019s offense. If he doesn\u2019t play well then it\u2019s very difficult for this MSU team to find enough offense elsewhere to win. So opposing teams might have changed how they defend Tyson causing him to struggle more.<\/p>\n I think this is exactly what happened in the Ohio State game. The Buckeyes doubled Tyson a lot of the game, which is something that other teams haven\u2019t done much of this year so far. So naturally, going against double teams will decrease his production. But I also think it has something to do with my third and final point.<\/p>\n Now this is just purely speculation, but Tyson may be struggling a little on the court because of a decrease in his body language and attitude. I was at the Ohio State game and I noticed a few things that just seemed off. He didn\u2019t seem vocal during timeouts at all. Walker was also visibly annoyed at teammates after they made a bad play. And every time he missed a shot you could just see him beating himself up.<\/p>\n Now I don\u2019t blame Tyson much for this. Anyone who has been struggling will likely see a decrease in their attitude. But Tyson is a leader of this team, and MSU needs him to stay positive as his attitude will impact everyone else\u2019s on the team.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no secret that Walker needs to play better if Michigan State basketball will go on any sort of run in March. I have full faith that he can do it, I just hope it starts sooner rather than later against Purdue on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This injury has been a season-killer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":15118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[190,189,504,202],"class_list":["post-15074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","tag-michigan-state-basketball","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-news","tag-tyson-walker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15074","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=15074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Groin injury<\/h3>\n
Defenses changing how they defend him<\/h3>\n
Attitude\/body language<\/h3>\n