With title in sight, Michigan State basketball continues to maximize its team-first effort

Posted by author March 3, 2025 Basketball

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EAST LANSING – Coen Carr with more spectacular gravity-defying dunks?

Meh.

Another Michigan State defensive lockdown in the waning minutes to secure a fifth-straight win and fourth in a row against a top-20 opponent?

Yawn.

Jaxon Kohler gobbling up rebounds? Jase Richardson doing Jase Richardson things? Timely plays off the bench from Tre Holloman and Carson Cooper and Frankie Fidler and others? An 18th game with all 10 rotation regulars scoring, and nine of them getting at least one board?

Predictable. In the best possible way for Tom Izzo and his players.

It’s the kind of steadiness that leads to banners getting hung in the Breslin Center rafters.

“At this point in the game, when everybody is doing their part, we just flow so well,” Kohler said Sunday. “It’s an amazing thing to watch but also be a part of.

“When everyone does their job, we’re just very dangerous in a lot of ways.”

The Spartans have come to expect this during their surprising and impressive return to the winning ways Izzo established over his 30 seasons. And Sunday’s 71-62 victory over No. 11 Wisconsin has No. 8 MSU standing on a familiar doorstep for Izzo.

Another potential Big Ten title? Well, that’s not so ho-hum.

“There’s not one time I said we’re a great, great team yet. We’re not,” Izzo said. “We’re edging closer.”

Jaden Akins scored 14 of his 19 points in the first half against the Badgers to help the league-leading Spartans rally from an early nine-point deficit. That included four 3-pointers for a team starving for improved outside shooting from its senior captain, who said he felt as good as he has in weeks.

But Akins also dialed in on defense, locking up leading Wisconsin scorer John Tonje to just 3-for-13 shooting and 11 points. A candidate for Big Ten Player of the Year, Tonje went 1-for-8 from 3-point range as MSU stifled the league’ best deep shooting team to just 5-for-32 from behind the arc.

“We just are desperate to win games. So we know we gotta play defense,” said Akins, who also grabbed eight of his team’s season-high 51 rebounds. “And that’s what we’re gonna do.”

Kohler posted his seventh double-double with 10 points and a career-best 16 boards, tying his personal high with seven of the Spartans’ 13 offensive rebounds. Richardson, after sitting all but 5:22 of the first half with early foul trouble, scored eight of his 11 points in the second half and provided six assists and five rebounds.

Carr delivered a pair of momentum-swinging dunks — a reverse off an alley-oop in the first half to spark a 15-4 comeback after falling behind, then a tomahawk in transition after the sophomore got a steal off Tonje — that Izzo felt were worth at least six points with the reaction from the Izzone. The second Carr jam was part of MSU’s 13-5 putaway punch over the final 5:15, and both helped the Spartans to a 20-8 advantage in fast-break points.

Coach Greg Gard said that helped finish off his Badgers (22-7, 12-6) and came off one of their five turnovers in the final 10:16 as the Spartans pulled away.

“Obviously the last six, seven minutes, I thought we really inflicted some damage to ourselves with some turnovers,” Gard said. “And that’s obviously credit to Michigan State.”

Carr wasn’t alone in providing energy in a reserve role, either.

Cooper threw down four dunks for all of the junior center’s eight points, three of them off lobs that were part of 20 MSU assists on 28 made baskets. Fidler finished with nine points, part of a 28-10 edge in bench scoring, and both he and Holloman delivered driving layups at pivotal points.

Defensively, the Spartans also smothered the Badgers into 4-for-17 shooting in the final 11-plus minutes. In many ways, it was a quintessential performance by a well-rounded group in which the team itself is the biggest star.

“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,” Izzo said.

And with second-place Michigan losing later Sunday at home to Illinois, that puts MSU a game up in the standings heading into the final week of the regular season — which happens to coincide with spring break in East Lansing.

The Spartans head to struggling Iowa on Thursday (8 p.m., FS1), and a win there would clinch at least a share of Izzo’s 11th regular-season Big Ten title, which would tie a league record. MSU also could enter that game with a piece of the throne in hand if U-M loses Wednesday at home to Maryland.

Then next Sunday, the Wolverines visit Breslin Center (noon, CBS) for a rematch of MSU’s 75-62 win Feb. 21 in Ann Arbor. What 24 hours earlier looked like a potential championship-deciding matchup could be nothing more than a game for rivalry pride.

But the Spartans also know what they must do before that arrives.

“Keep doing the same thing,” Akins said. “Just really play desperate, like your life is on the line.”

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.

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