Couch: 3 quick takes on Michigan State basketball's 71-67 loss to Indiana

Couch: 3 quick takes on Michigan State basketball’s 71-67 loss to Indiana

Posted by author February 12, 2025 Basketball

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1. MSU, as it’s playing right now, isn’t going to win anything meaningful

EAST LANSING – Oof. Bob Knight sure is hanging on hard to a piece of this Big Ten wins record.

The bigger problem for Tom Izzo and Michigan State’s basketball program is the Spartans aren’t playing very well right now, other than an electric second half against Oregon on Saturday. That performance was nowhere to be found Tuesday night against Indiana, which bullied the MSU in the paint, threw a zone at the Spartans that confounded them and walked out of Breslin Center with their first win in six games, 71-67.

MSU, meanwhile, didn’t look like a team that has the chops to compete for a Big Ten championship, even as the Spartans put together a feisty final couple minutes, featuring a free-throw clinic.

This version of MSU won’t win at Illinois on Saturday, or against Purdue next Tuesday, or at Michigan the Friday after that, or at Maryland the following Wednesday. Knight could have a share of this thing until sometime in March if THESE Spartans keep showing up.

It’s hard to imagine this is being the norm. Not every team has the bigs to get MSU in that sort of foul trouble. Not every night will point guard Jeremy Fears Jr. be so ineffective and will the Spartans’ shooters be this off — even if 4-for-23 from 3 doesn’t seem all that foreign.

But for large chunks of the last four games — ever since Izzo was on the brink of Knight’s record — life has been a struggle for the Spartans.

Forget the record, MSU (19-5 overall, 10-3 Big Ten) has figure out how to get going again. Sure, the schedule has picked up. But during its 9-0 Big Ten start, MSU beat three teams that have beaten the Hoosiers. Tuesday had nothing to do with the schedule. The rest of the month, though, is a different animal.

2. Indiana’s big men were a problem

I’m not saying MSU should have tried to land Oumar Ballo in the transfer portal. There are plenty of reasons why the Indiana 7-footer (by way of Arizona) wouldn’t have been the right fit for MSU’s team and program. But you can see the problems a guy of his size and presence causes when he’s locked in. He was a problem Tuesday, largely because he got MSU’s big men in severe foul trouble. It’s the first time that’s happened to this extent all season.

Hoosiers 6-9 power forward Malik Reneau took over from there, finishing with 19 points on 8-for-19 shooting after going 1-for-8 from the floor in the first half. He also had 12 rebounds. MSU had no answer for him on the drive down the stretch.

Ballo, though, was really good and set the tone — 14 points on 6-for-8 shooting, 10 rebounds, three on the offensive end, and a team-best plus-13 plus-minus in 26 minutes before fouling out himself.

These were the matchups MSU struggled to handle in recent years, including last season in Bloomington. MSU, believe it or not, was better than a year ago. Foul trouble was more crippling than the matchup. Szymon Zapala, Jaxon Kohler and Carson Cooper ware all limited by fouls, with Cooper fouling out in 16 minutes and Kohler and Zapala finishing with four each in 18 and 15, respectively.

Cooper, who had seven points and five rebounds, finished with a team-best plus-minus of plus-seven, while Kohler (seven rebounds, six of them in the first half) and Frankie Fidler (both plus-1) were the only other rotation players with positive plus-minuses for MSU. In other words, when Cooper and Kohler were in the game, things were OK-ish. They weren’t the problem as much as their foul trouble, and MSU’s poor shooting and point guard play.

3. Lineup change only highlights MSU’s unpredictability

Part of this MSU team’s identity is its unpredictability. It works for the Spartans sometimes. Sometimes not. One game doesn’t often carry over to the next with individual performances.

MSU put freshman Jase Richardson in the starting lineup Tuesday after Richardson’s dazzling effort against Oregon on Saturday. Tre Holloman, who’s been starting since the North Carolina game in Maui (which started MSU’s 13-game winning streak), came off the bench. If a change was going to be made, this was it.

Richardson is too much a part of MSU’s ceiling not to get the most out of him, even if starting isn’t essential to do that. Holloman is a team guy who can handle such a move. Yet he was MSU’s best guard for large parts of Tuesday’s game — certainly MSU’s most effective point guard against Indiana’s zone, with nine points and seven assists and a big floater and some important free throws late.

Richardson was good at times, too — finishing with 13 points (though making just 1 of 6 3-point tries) — including a brief stretch in the second half where it looked like he might take things over offensively. It never happened. And his late turnover as MSU was inching its way to within a possession, was costly. He’s a freshman. It’s a lot to ask him to be THE GUY. But offensively, he’s MSU’s best guy. He just wasn’t anywhere near as good as he’s been at his best Saturday. He wasn’t the issue. But he wasn’t the answer.

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on X @Graham_Couch and BlueSky @GrahamCouch.