Michigan State\u2019s loss to Indiana<\/a>, but he only played seven minutes. Usually it makes no sense when Booker disappears from the lineup, but did\u00a0Izzo make the right decision this time?<\/p>\nWas Tom Izzo right to not play Booker against Indiana?<\/h3>\n
As I mentioned, Booker got the start against Indiana but only played seven minutes. This almost never happens for a starter at any level unless the player gets hurt or is in foul trouble. Neither happened to Booker, so should we be upset by him not playing much?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been a huge advocate that Booker has needed to play more for Michigan State this year, but I think Tom Izzo made the correct choice this time. In Booker\u2019s seven minutes played, the only stat he recorded was one foul. He missed the one shot he took and failed to get an assist or rebound. He even didn\u2019t record any defensive stats either.<\/p>\n
Most of Booker\u2019s minutes also came in the beginning of the game when Indiana jumped to a 17-point lead. The Spartan comeback, which ultimately came up just short, came with Booker on the bench. So when you combine his lack of production with the team doing much better without him, I think Izzo was correct in keeping Booker on the bench.<\/p>\n
Even though Izzo made the right call this time, this doesn\u2019t mean he shouldn\u2019t play more going forward. If the matchup is right and Booker\u2019s playing well, then he needs to get a majority of the post minutes. We all know Booker\u2019s ceiling is higher than MSU\u2019s other post players, so he needs to play a lot for the Spartans to reach their potential.<\/p>\n
But Izzo can\u2019t force it when it comes to Booker\u2019s playing time. So if he\u2019s struggling or the team is doing better without him, then maybe benching Booker is the correct call in the future as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This was actually the right move.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":16030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15976","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=15976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}