These aren't typical high school practices, where everyone else is smaller and you're the best player on the team.

The four freshmen on the MSU men's basketball team found that out last week.

"Practice has been tough - very tough. It's a lot different from high school - it's a big adjustment," freshman forward Marquise Gray said after practice last Monday. "We just have to work on playing hard every day and playing consistent."

All the freshman seemed a little overwhelmed at first by intense practices. Center Goran Suton said it was the hardest he's ever worked in his life and point guard Drew Neitzel said things around him were going 100 mph.

"The speed and intensity of every single drill - there's no downtime," Neitzel said. "You are constantly moving from one thing to the next."

Suton said he was dehydrated a lot of the time and all four freshmen discussed how tiring the practices can be.

Head coach Tom Izzo has seen many freshmen in his tenure as a coach and this year is no different as he tries to break in another freshman class.

"Freshmen - you know," Izzo said with a grin, "They've been picking it up. I thought (Monday) our big guys had a better day.

"It's just, at times, the intensity of (practice) - getting balls knocked loose and things like that..."

Last Monday, the freshmen began learning offensive plays. Suton said prior to that, they worked on in-bound plays.

"There's so many plays, I can't even name them," Suton said. "All we can do is watch film and try to memorize them."

Freshman center Idong Ibok knows that playing with talented returning players such as Chris Hill, Alan Anderson and Kelvin Torbert can only help boost his game.

"It sheds light on a whole lot of stuff for me, what I can get done playing with guys like them - what I need to do, the little things I can put in and help contribute to a team of experienced players," Ibok said.

"Being a freshman coming in and these guys having been here the last few years, I'm able to listen to them, learn from their experiences and know what to do and what not to do."

The four freshmen also are learning that they need one another for support. They live together in the dorms and are suitemates. Neitzel said the four have little free time, but when they do, they spend it together.

"We're all pretty close," he said. "We've been together since the summer with nobody else up here - we've been through a lot.

"We can talk to each other about anything. We hang out a lot - hopefully we're building that chemistry for years to come."