EAST LANSING — It might just be that Michigan State is the best team in the Big Ten. At a certain point, there’s no other conclusion. We’re getting there.
MSU’s 71-62 win over Wisconsin on Sunday at Breslin Center was the latest in a string of wins against teams considered either the most talented or the most efficient or with the best player or the best starting five or playing the best over the last month.
Illinois, Purdue, Michigan, Maryland and now Wisconsin have all fallen short against an MSU team that was supposed to be cooked after its unceremonious home loss to Indiana. Turns out, this group had more to it than probably any of us realized.
MSU won again Sunday with its defense, holding the Badgers to 47 points over the final 35 minutes and to 34% shooting, including 15% beyond the arc, an abysmal 5-for-32.
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You don’t have to be the world’s best 3-point shooting team if you defend your own 3-point line like MSU does. The Spartans have been the Big Ten’s best 3-point defense throughout conference play.
Other than four first-half 3-pointers from Jaden Akins — who stepped up with Jase Richardson in foul trouble (and had 14 of his 19 points in the first half) — nothing MSU did Sunday was out of the ordinary.
They’ve been closing games incredibly well and did again Sunday — ending on an 11-2 run. They’ve been winning with depth, defense, rebounding and creating runs that give them momentum they never lose. Happened again.
Coen Carr had just four points Sunday — but if you saw the game, you remember both dunks and the boost they provided. MSU out-rebounded Wisconsin 51-40. That’s the norm these days. Jaxon Kohler dominated the glass (more on that below). Richardson was dazzling in the second half — eight points, six assists, five rebounds and an important steal all after halftime.
And so MSU begins the final week of Big Ten play 15-3 and alone in first-place (after Michigan’s loss to Illinois). If the Spartans beat Iowa on Thursday, they’ll clinch a share of the title. If they beat the Wolverines next Sunday, the title is for sure theirs outright.
That makes sense now. Wisconsin, Maryland, Purdue and Illinois, at least, would agree.
“There’s not one time I said we’re a great, great team yet. We’re not. We’re getting closer,” Tom Izzo said. “The shooting would take us to another level.
“I think it says a lot about your team that you can bear down in those last five minutes and just take a stranglehold defensively.”
2. The peril of grabbing every rebound is that you don’t get to take a break
It’s been a while since I’ve seen Jaxon Kohler look so out of breath — and never before have I seen Tom Izzo and the staff so ignore it. Kohler already had 13 rebounds, six on the offensive end, not even midway through the second half. He was deemed essential. So they rode him to the next media timeout.
Kohler’s emergence as an elite rebounder — the best in MSU’s program since Xavier Tillman — has been a big part of this season and the DNA of this MSU team. Saturday was as good of a game as he’s had in that regard — a career-high 16 total rebounds, seven on the offensive end, a couple in a key sequence in the first half, setting up a Jaden Akins 3, as MSU was making its first run. Another in the final minutes when things were tight, corralled in the middle of two Wisconsin players, that nearly led to a dagger Jase Richardson 3, which rimmed out.
It’s Kohler’s strength and positioning, the strength of his hands and his knack for reaching into traffic and being the guy who comes away with it. It’s something we haven’t seen at MSU since Tillman. And it’s not who Kohler was expected to be when he arrived at MSU. And it’s no accident.
“Monster heart. Just like Tillman,” Izzo said. “He’s just an animal to go there. He does it in our practices. Doug Wojcik and Saddi (Washington) said it best, because they got him every night. ‘There’s never a day when he doesn’t come to practice. There’s never a day when he doesn’t come to go hard.’ He’s not gifted with long arms or two more inches or phenomenal jumping ability.
“He’s got good hands. He just has a nose for the ball. He’s like a great linebacker — he has a nose for the ball. And some of those ones he got were in traffic, and I was going on the bench, ‘How in the hell did he get that?’ Because their guys are good, too. … He plays possessed. That’s how he gets it done. He is like, like a heat-seeking missile, and, man, if we get everybody to play like that, we’ll improve even more.”
That was his 10th double-digit rebounding game of this season. He also finished with 10 points and two assists. While his offensive game — his calling card as a prospect — is still inconsistent, he’s turned himself into the power forward the Spartans sorely needed.
He said before the season it was going to happen. We can certainly believe him now. He chose to become this. Again, no accident.
“You start to develop kind of like a system in your head,” Kohler said. “And you start to know where the ball is going and you know how to use your physicality to your advantage. I’m not the tallest guy. I can’t jump the highest, but I can do the little things the most in terms of physicality — sealing or kind of getting a lower base and jumping at the right moment.
“But something that going into this year I really kind of took a lot of interest in and pride in is the game within a game of rebounding. If you’re on one side and the ball is coming on the other side, you have to know that it’s probably coming to you. And you just have to make sure that you get low and you seal before the ball goes up so you have an advantage. There really is a game in rebounding, and that’s something that me, coming into this year, I knew I was going to have to get a lot better at … And then it kind of comes in here (my heart) most of the time now, because it only works if you want it to work. It only works if you’re willing to go chase the ball. Because there are times where you get tired. There are times where there’s someone more physical than you or taller who can jump higher, but you have to give it more heart and just want it more.”
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3. MSU’s guard depth shows it can survive Richardson foul trouble
There are valid arguments that it doesn’t make sense to sit a player who picks up two quick fouls for the rest of the first half, as Tom Izzo did with Jase Richardson on Sunday, after MSU’s freshman star picked up his second trying to take a charge with 14:38 remaining until halftime.
Richardson has to know the juice isn’t worth the squeeze on that play. He’s too important.
But we saw MSU’s guard depth in practice after that. I think Izzo would have gone back to Richardson if the game had continued to get away from MSU or if MSU’s other guards hadn’t played as well as they did for the rest of the half.
Instead, almost immediately after Richardson sat down — replaced by Jaden Akins — the Spartans made their move, beginning with another memorable Coen Carr alley-oop dunk from Tre Holloman — this one caught with his back to the rim before throwing down a two-handed reverse dunk.
Jaxon Kohler started grabbing every offensive rebound and Akins, with a couple tries, got rolling for a stretch, on his way to four first-half 3s.
I don’t think this was a matter of Izzo being stubborn about not playing a player with two fouls the rest of the half — we’ve seen him do it recently. But the game state allowed for Richardson to sit. MSU was down 13-4 when Richardson checked out and three minutes later was up 19-17. The game played out even from then on, with Akins and Jeremy Fears Jr. particularly playing well. There was no need to force Richardson back into a game for a few minutes late in the half.
Most importantly, in a big game — against a Sweet 16 or better-caliber team — MSU showed it can survive these situations. Because the five-foul limit in college basketball might be nonsensical (given the inconsistency of officiating), but it’s not going anywhere before the NCAA tournament.
MSU needs Richardson to close a game like this and it had him, able to play without worrying about foul trouble, for the full second half. For example, when he picked up his third with 7:39 remaining — a horrendous call — it was only his third.
Sitting him for a long spell only works if your other guys can get you through it.
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Contact Graham Couch at [email protected]. Follow him on X @Graham_Couch and BlueSky @GrahamCouch.
