Michigan State basketball got wake-up call from Penn State

Winning games in the Big Ten isn’t easy. Michigan State basketball found that out the hard way on Wednesday night as a pesky Penn State team came to town riding a three-game losing streak.

Penn State had lost three straight games and its best player was hampered by back spasms why Michigan State was on a nine-game winning streak with no major injuries. Felt like it should have been an easy win, right?

Wrong.

Michigan State led the entire way and even built a 10-point halftime lead, but Penn State battled back to make things interesting in the final 20 minutes. The Nittany Lions opened the second half on an 8-0 run to pull within two and the Spartans eventually pulled back away, but the lead sat comfortably in the 5-9-point range for most of the second half.

Fortunately, Michigan State was able to hold on for a 90-85 win even though it was an 11.5-point favorite heading into the game. Penn State is a solid team (12-5 on the year) but given how well the Spartans had been playing, no one expected it to be this close.

But the Spartans nearly got caught looking ahead to Illinois on Sunday. There’s a decent chance that the Big Ten title race will come down to a four-team battle between Michigan State, Michigan, Purdue, and Illinois so it makes sense that there was some looking ahead happening. And you know practice over the next three days won’t be much fun as they prepare for the red-hot Illini, especially after the lackluster, at best, defensive performance on Wednesday.

While I could be lazy and blame the tightness of this one on the refs (they were horrible both ways), I will say that the poor 3-point defense and just mediocre rebounding performance led to this five-point win. That can’t happen on Sunday.

Let’s hope things are corrected over the next few days as the Spartans prepare for the Illini.