Michigan State basketball<\/a> marches on. The Spartans defeated 8-seeded Mississippi State 69-51<\/a> and are moving on to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Many, and I mean many, across the country believed the Spartans didn\u2019t belong in the tournament, but this win solidifies the fact that the committee got it right.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how the Spartans were able to get the job done against the Bulldogs.<\/p>\n In a season full of disgusting first-half performances, the Spartans did the exact opposite of what\u2019s become expected on Thursday. The Spartans started hot, getting out to an early 20-8 lead. On top of that, MSU was extremely solid from three, shooting 38.5% in the half. Also, shoutout to Jaden Akins for knocking down two of them.<\/p>\n But the Spartans also did some of the little things extremely well. They were +6 rebounding the ball and forced seven Mississippi State turnovers in the first half. They also held the Bulldogs to just 24 points which is impressive.<\/p>\n No, MSU wasn\u2019t perfect, it did have nine turnovers of its own and let Josh Hubbard go off for 13 first-half points, but when you have a seven-point halftime lead in the NCAA Tournament you can\u2019t complain too much.<\/p>\n Mississippi State is one of the best teams at defending the three. In fact, they were No. 7 in the country holding their opponents to just 29 percent from behind the arc. However, Michigan State blitzed the Bulldogs from 3-point range shooting 43.5%. A 14 percent increase compared to Mississippi State\u2019s season average is absolutely insane.<\/p>\n The best thing I saw from the Spartan\u2019s 3-point shooting was Akins hitting three of his own. This team is infinitely better when he\u2019s hitting his shots, so him being able to knock a few down is massive.<\/p>\n This elite 3-point shooting arguably is the biggest reason the Spartans won this game. Mississippi State went zone in a lot of the second half which forced MSU to take a lot of threes. Maybe that was a poor call by Mississippi State, but the Spartans took advantage of what the defense gave them and hit many big shots.<\/p>\n Michigan State had two guys they really had to key in on defensively, and as long as they slowed one of the two down they were going to have a great chance of winning. Josh Hubbard scored 15 which was close to his season average, but it was Tolu Smith who MSU did excellent defending.<\/p>\n Smith averaged 15.2 points and 8.4 rebounds per game this season and was a matchup nightmare for MSU\u2019s bigs. Or so I thought. The Spartan post players held Tolu to just nine points and only two rebounds. This is significant because if he got hot along with Hubbard, this likely would\u2019ve been a much closer game. But the Spartans defense was lights out, and slowing Tolu down was arguably the best part of their defense.<\/p>\n The Spartans now have a date with 1-seeded North Carolina next. That matchup may scare you, but if MSU plays as well as they did on Thursday then they most certainly can pull off the upset.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A lot went right for these Spartans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":16768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[59,205,190,189,504],"class_list":["post-16702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","tag-featured","tag-jaden-akins","tag-michigan-state-basketball","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16702","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=16702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}1. Near-perfect first half<\/h3>\n
2. Deadly 3-point shooting<\/h3>\n
3. Slowing Tolu Smith down<\/h3>\n