NEW YORK – Ten of the 14 schools in the Big Ten opened their regular seasons on Tuesday night, the opening night of college basketball across the country.
Nine of those 10 schools played at home against teams from outside the power conferences or outside Division 1 altogether. Eight of them won, most of them with ease to make for celebratory affairs in front of home crowds.
Michigan State, meanwhile, traveled away from home to play the No. 3 team in the country. And while it started its season with an 87-74 loss to Kansas, Michigan State thought it got more out of that loss than most other teams did in their wins.
“If you’re playing smaller schools, you don’t really get a chance to really showcase where you’re at with higher-level competition, March Madness-type of players,” Michigan State senior Gabe Brown said. “So that was good for us.”
Mostly, Michigan State learned on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden that it’s a step below a Kansas team that looked every bit the national title contender on opening night.
But the specifics of how the Spartans fell provided some hope to Spartans players and coaches who were hardly down on themselves on Tuesday night.
The Spartans fell in large part due to a free throw disparity (9-for-16 for Michigan State, 19-for-24) that Izzo blamed on preparation.
“Me and my staff should take a lot of abuse for that because that’s something you should be able to control a little more,” Izzo said.
The Spartans also recorded 16 turnovers, seven more than Kansas, the majority of which came during a sloppy first half.
But strip out those two elements that Michigan State hopes are fixable in the immediate future and the game looks more even. The Spartans shot only slightly worse from the field than Kansas, hit one more 3-pointer and won the rebounding battle handily (37-to-30).
The Spartans didn’t seem physically overmatched. All of that might be seen in the coming days, if not immediately after the game.
“There are probably more good things than bad,” Izzo said. “But when you shoot that poorly from the free throw line and turn the ball over, there’s no excuse for that.”
While Michigan State’s newcomers had some difficult debuts, Izzo said he was pleased with the play of several of his returners.
The most visible of those players was sophomore point guard A.J. Hoggard, who scored a team-high 17 points on 8-for-13 shooting. After Michigan State brought in Northeastern transfer Tyson Walker and made him the opening night starter, Hoggard proved that despite his up-and-down freshman year that he’ll be a factor for the Spartans this season.
“Just me attacking, being attack mode, it did especially open up like it did today just like it did with me being aggressive and also we me coming off looking for others as well,” Hoggard said. “So I think it opened up a bit of both.”
Senior Marcus Bingham Jr. also had a solid debut of 10 points and seven rebounds, despite his coach being less-than-pleased with his 3-point attempts.
Brown overcame early foul trouble for an eight-point second half, and Izzo said he plans to get Brown more than the nine shots he took on Tuesday. Junior forward Julius Marble’s 13 marked a career-high.
The takeaway of all that: Michigan State has the players to stay on the floor against a high-level program – so long as it doesn’t make the mistakes it did on Tuesday.
“I’m not totally disappointed,” Izzo said. “I think there were some positive things that we can build on. I was just a little surprised by the free throw shooting.”
Despite entering the season unranked and coming off of a 15-13 season, Michigan State is playing its typically difficult schedule: it still has a road game at Butler, a home game against Louisville and the three-game Battle 4 Atlantis that will likely feature games against multiple ranked teams.
There’s a good chance the Spartans take at least one more loss in that stretch. But Izzo will still take the experience of playing the games as a worthwhile tradeoff.
“I think it’s what I have to do to make my program No. 1,” Izzo said of his schedule. “I’m concerned in this age of social media whether kids can handle it. It’d be nice to get eight wins and then everybody’s feeling good and everybody’s telling them how good they are and then you get your butt kicked, but at least you feel good. I think this is better.”
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Michigan State gets a loss but also a lesson in another difficult opener - MLive.com
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