"It's been a drag," Clark said. "This year has been very, very hard for me, mentally and physically. ... But I'm back and starting to feel like myself again and I'm starting to play a little bit better."

A year ago, the 6-foot-6 sophomore forward from Kansas, City, Mo., had about as good a season as he could have hoped to have as a freshman, appearing in 39 games and averaging 4.5 points and 2.2 rebounds for a Final Four team. 

However, at the beginning of this year, Clark went down with a foot injury in September and had surgery, which put him out for almost two months.

Since then, it has been a constant struggle for Clark to regain his normal form. While he returned to action in MSU's third game of the regular season, Clark's struggles weren't over there. It then turned into a struggle to get back to where he was a season before, and then a few months of working his way back into MSU's rotation.

The last four MSU games, however, have seen Clark working his way back into MSU's game plan. It all started before a game against Indiana on Feb. 14, when MSU assistant Mike Garland saw Clark staying late in Breslin Center watching film.

MSU head basketball Tom Izzo said Garland came to him and said "play Marv." So when MSU freshman forward Kenny Goins went down with a knee injury, Clark stepped up.

In the last four games, Clark is averaging 13 minutes a game for the Spartans, which includes Sunday's victory against Penn State, where Clark came off the bench, hit two quick shots and was able to finish with five points and four rebounds, play which Izzo has been impressed by lately.

"He's making some progress," Izzo said. "He was out a long time — eight or nine weeks because of the injury, eight or nine weeks because of the coach. But I think he's coming. What I like about him is, he's receptive to hearing and understanding."

Clark credits much of his improved play to watching film, but also to the benefit of being able to consistently keep himself on the floor.

"Being injured and out for months, at this level, trying to come back and just hop right back into things, it didn't work like that," Clark said. "It's taken a while to get back to where I'm at, but just having that feel of knowing our principles, knowing what they do, being ready to play, just those things. That's the biggest thing that I really had to work on and it's starting to show that I'm capable of putting that back into my game."

And for Clark, while he isn't shy to say how much this season has been rough on him, he said he's still enjoying the ride of being part of a 24-5 team with very real national championship hopes.

"At the end of the day, these are my brothers, guys that I bleed and sweat with so it's definitely been fun," Clark said. "But at the same time, being a player, you want to play and you want to help your team win and that's the only thing that's been hard to get over but at the same time ... the team has been playing well and we've been successful, so I really couldn't complain."