Michigan State Basketball: Good, great, bad, and ugly from Alcorn State win

 Ugly: Rebounding

In addition to the field goal drought, MSU also struggled rebounding the basketball. Fortunately for the Spartans, however, neither affected the outcome. MSU was out-rebounded by Alcorn State, 41-38. Michigan State is a bigger and better team than the Braves. There is zero reason that the Spartans should be out-rebounded by their SWAC opponent. Alcorn State has just one player standing over 6-foor-8, and yet, they had six more offensive rebounds than MSU.

Against a Big Ten opponent, or Arizona later this week, providing that many second chance opportunities will be detrimental for Michigan State. The Spartan bigs cannot be out worked as they were Sunday night.

Something tells me Izzo will focus his practices this week around that. 

“But the real concern is the rebounding. We get out-rebounded, they have 16 offensive (rebounds). You can look at it two ways. My staff tried be to, well, God, they missed a lot of shots, they had a lot of opportunities for offensive rebounds. I said, yeah, we had a lot of opportunities for defensive rebounds. So it just depends which way you want to look at it. I want to look at it my way. They can look at it whatever the hell way they want, but my way is gonna be the one that matters in the meetings tomorrow. So that’s a concern.” – Izzo on being out-rebounded.

This can’t happen moving forward.