Michigan State basketball<\/a> was stunned by an underrated James Madison team-opening night but had to get past it quickly and gear up for Southern Indiana. While there definitely are still things MSU will need to straighten out, the Spartans took the lead off the tip and never looked back. <\/span><\/p>\nA 23-point halftime lead would lead to a victory with the same margin, 74-51.<\/span><\/p>\nNext week, the schedule becomes real as Michigan State squares off against Duke. But for now, let\u2019s look at the good, great, bad, and ugly from their first win of the season over Southern Indiana.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nGood: Free throw shooting<\/h3>\n
Quite literally a bad, recurring dream, Michigan State opened the season poorly from the free throw line, again. Even going back to the exhibition games, MSU has struggled from the line this season. While Michigan State turned their free throw shooting around in the second half of Monday\u2019s loss, they still would finish shooting just 62 percent. <\/span><\/p>\nThankfully, against Southern Indiana on Thursday night, the Spartans notched their highest percentage this year. Michigan State went 23-for-28 from the charity stripe, good for 82 percent. As I will discuss in more depth later in this article, having offensive opportunities from the line when your deep ball is not falling is a must. It may still work out against a team like Southern Indiana, but against a Big Ten opponent, capitalizing on free throws is key to coming away with a win.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMalik Hall, Carson Cooper, Jaden Akins, Tyson Walker, and Tre Holloman all were perfect in their free throw attempts on Thursday night. Mady Sissoko was just behind them, going 6-for-7 from the line. Being consistent and reliable from a free throw perspective will cover up some areas of concern for this team down the line. <\/span><\/p>\nThey must continue to do well when given the chance. <\/span><\/p>\nGreat: Starting balance production<\/h3>\n
A staple in Tom Izzo offenses is sharing the ball, and taking the shot the defense allows. Michigan State basketball did that against Southern Indiana, finishing the night with 21 assists. Four out of the five starters ended with double-digit scoring, Hoggard being the only one who did not (more on him in the next section). Once again, the 3-point shot was not working for Michigan State, so all four starters attacked in different ways. Midrange, layups, and the aforementioned free throws allow Michigan State to stay in front of a bad Southern Indiana team. <\/span><\/p>\nOf the four starters finishing in double digits, three of them finished shooting 50 percent from the field on the night. Walker and Sissoko finished shooting 85 percent and 100 percent, respectively. Efficiency like that, especially when the deep ball is not falling, will lead to success. <\/span><\/p>\nBeing able to spread a defense thin thanks to multiple players filling the stat sheet is a great skill. If Michigan State can balance its offense, opposing defenses will not be able to key in on one player. This likely would eliminate a shutdown opposing defender dictating MSU offensive production. That would give MSU an incredible advantage on the offensive end. One that will be needed these next few weeks against Duke, Butler, and Arizona. <\/span><\/p>\nBad: Point guard play<\/h3>\n
The eye test will tell you A.J. Hoggard had a decent game, but the stat sheet will prove otherwise. He finished with just four points and four assists, to go along with three turnovers. In years past, Hoggard has had great games both creating for his teammates, finishing with seven or eight assists, or scoring himself. Thursday night, Hoggard didn\u2019t quite do either. Four assists is not terrible, it\u2019s above his season average of 3.5, but against a team like Southern Indiana when your Spartans score 74, Hoggard should have had 1.5x that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhen it comes to scoring for himself, Hoggard was disappointing as well. He finished with just four points. As was the case for the entire team, Hoggard\u2019s 3-point shot was not falling. But, unlike his fellow starters, that essentially spelled the end of his offensive night. Hoggard is a big-bodied point guard who is great at getting to the basket. While his finishing skills are above average, this is usually where he can rack up the free throw shots and put the other team in foul trouble. A.J. finished Thursday night without having a free throw appearance. As I\u2019ll mention in the next section, if the three is not falling, driving and getting to the basket is your next best option. An option that A.J. decided to not take against Southern Indiana.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThere has been plenty of back and forth regarding Hoggard\u2019s body language issues in the past. He even received a benching last season in an attempt to light a fire under him. Izzo sent a message that seemed to work. After Monday night\u2019s performance, followed up by this, I think a message has to be sent in one way or another. Tre Holloman, on the other hand, has looked better than expected. He has even hit one of the Spartans’ only 3-pointers. Maybe more of a timeshare is in store until Hoggard can take his senior season by the horns and be the player Michigan State basketball needs him to be.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0Ugly: 3-point shooting<\/h3>\n
After MSU went just 1-for-20 from deep against James Madison, I still was not concerned. Some nights your shots just aren\u2019t falling. Then you start thinking about shots not falling, and it begins to snowball. However, by the time a new game comes around, a reset has usually occurred and players find their median. <\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019m more concerned after Thursday night\u2019s performance from three. <\/span><\/p>\nMichigan State would finish shooting just 1-for-11 (9%) from deep. This means that Michigan State, a year removed from shooting upwards of 40 percent from deep as a team, is shooting just 2-for-31 from three. That\u2019s six percent on the year. That is horrendous. Opposing defenses are only going to get better, so the Spartans must figure it out, sooner rather than later. This team is too talented for just Tyson Walker and Tre Holloman to have made a 3-pointer this year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe silver lining for the poor 3-point shooting Thursday night was that when the shots were obviously not falling, MSU did not continue to force the issue. On Monday, even with multiple JMU starters in foul trouble, Michigan State did not want to drive to the hole but rather continued to shoot threes that were not falling. Thursday night, the Spartans took half the 3-point shots as they did Monday. The faster a team can recognize the outside shot is not falling, the quicker an adjustment can be made. This helps ensure a scoring drought isn\u2019t imminent. Once other shots start to connect, the 3-ball may eventually come around. But, after going just six percent from deep to start the year, MSU needs to get this figured out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Things looked better on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[217,59,190,189,504],"class_list":["post-8666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","tag-aj-hoggard","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\/8666","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\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}