Jase Richardson’s emergence has a star scorer takes this MSU’s ceiling and moves it to levels we might not have expected going into the season. When he plays like this, this MSU team could probably beat any team in the country.

Impressive Carson Cooper game

While I think all of MSU’s big men did a collectively good job trying to slow down Vladislav Goldin, I thought Carson Cooper had a particularly impressive night. His team-leading eight rebounds were a huge part of MSU’s dominance on the boards, which ended up being a major difference in this game.

MSU finally beats the zone

I know Tom Izzo has to be feeling a little smug at how his team finally was able to beat a zone defense after this one. This team had struggled against the zone this year, and Izzo has been asked about it at multiple press conferences, where he continued to insist that his team could, in fact, beat a zone. In the first half, it looked like MSU would once again have issues against the zone, but they finally figured it out in the second half and now it should be much harder for teams to use it successfully in the future. Part of that, as Izzo bemoaned in his press conferences, is that MSU just needed to hit the open shots that were given to them by the zone defense. They finally did that on Friday night, hitting nine triples at a 40.9-percent clip against the Wolverines.

The revenge of Jeremy Fears Jr.

You have to feel good for Jeremy Fears Jr. coming out of this game. During this rougher stretch for the Spartans, Fears has looked a little rattled as teams have started to play off of him on defense, daring him to shoot. On Friday night, Michigan was almost taunting Fears with how far back they were playing him. Then, he made them pay. Fears hit two big threes in the second half, with a smile coming to his face after he hit the second one. I don’t expect Fears to become a good shooter this season, but if he can just make enough of those open ones to keep teams honest, that’s all they need.