On Saturday, the stage was set for Michigan State basketball. Two Hall of Fame coaches, Tom Izzo and Arkansas\u2019s John Calipari, were set to battle in an early November matchup. As far as the players go, Arkansas brought star freshmen Darius Acuff Jr. and Meleek Thomas entered with all the hype, while the Spartan hype focused around their returning core four from last season\u2019s Elite Eight squad. Not much was made about freshman forward Cam Ward, who was entering his second collegiate game with the Spartans.<\/p>\n
As soon as Carson Cooper hit the bench with two early fouls, it was Ward\u2019s time to shine. The freshman took the game over, finishing with 12 points in 14 minutes in the first half, to pair with five rebounds and two steals. Simply put, the four-star was everywhere on the court.<\/p>\n
Following his game, he was the focus of the media in the locker room, and it was time to really learn more about the freshman from Maryland.<\/p>\n
For the freshman, the environment was amazing. Even during his recruiting process, Ward never got to see the Breslin Center light up on game day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never got to see a game, never ever ever. Other than Midnight Madness, I had never been to a game,\u201d Ward revealed. \u201cI had so many chills tonight, man, it was crazy. I loved every bit of tonight! This is why I play basketball. I knew once I caught chills, that was the main reason I was going to have a good game. It sparked something in me. If you can play a game like this and not feel any nerves, then this is not the game for you. I was nervous, for sure, but I knew I had to step up for my team today.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the chills hit Ward right away, what really got him going was no surprise. The hard-working freshman felt it from his first rebound and dunk.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the first rebound to the dunk, just making an impact early, that is what sparked the fire in me,\u201d Ward said. \u201cThis could, this could be a time for me to go and be a dawg, and that is what coach was telling me all game, \u2018be a dawg, be a dawg. Just be the best player you can be in the moment.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Ward was quick to shine some praise on his teammates too, something he did at nearly every opportunity in his media availability.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just so grateful for my teammates having my back, and telling me to just keep going, in practice, they just helped me so much in practice and I cannot take any credit for this,\u201d the freshman deflected praise. \u201cThis is from my teammates and my coaches (preparing me).\u201d<\/p>\n
The focus is already on for Thursday\u2019s upcoming Spartan bowl, with the San Jose State Spartans traveling to the Breslin Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re gonna celebrate tonight, but tomorrow, the focus is on San Jose State. The energy changes. We\u2019re going to enjoy tonight, but tomorrow, we are going to start worrying about who we start playing next,\u201d Ward said of his mindset.<\/p>\n
The freshmen duo of Cam Ward and Jordan Scott have been standing out in the early season, and Ward was asked what the secret is for the two of them. Simply put, all the freshmen want to do is win. They came to play for Michigan State basketball for a reason.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to win,\u201d Ward stated. \u201cWe don\u2019t come from losing programs in high school or AAU. His team is back-to-back state championships, my team is back-to-back state championships. All we know is winning, so why would we come into a losing program, and think that is what it is going to be? We came into a winning program, that has a history of winning, and that\u2019s why we win. That is what hungers us, and drives us to be great, because we want to keep winning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Saturday, the stage was set for Michigan State basketball. Two Hall of Fame coaches, Tom Izzo and Arkansas\u2019s John Calipari, were set to battle in an early November matchup. As far as the players go, Arkansas brought star freshmen Darius Acuff Jr. and Meleek Thomas entered with all the hype, while the Spartan hype […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":22443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[829,59,190,189,504],"class_list":["post-22454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","tag-cam-ward","tag-featured","tag-michigan-state-basketball","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22454","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}