It's no secret that MSU has been struggling with the 3-point shot lately.

Since Big Ten play began, the Spartans have shot 30 percent or less from behind the arc nine times, a trend that continued Wednesday at Northwestern.

"I'd like to see it improve," MSU head coach Tom Izzo said. "But really, I don't need it to improve.

"I'd like to get it back to where it was, which I guess is improving, but we've shot the ball well before. For some reason, we've got a couple guys who've been in a slump shooting the ball."

If not for junior guard Maurice Ager, who made 4-of-5 of his 3-pointers, MSU's percentage would've dropped to 13.3 percent (2-for-15).

Ager was on fire all night long, after hitting only 3-of-9 attempts in the previous three games.

"This is a good shooting gym," Ager said after the game. "I was feeling pretty good."

Hitting the 3-point shot is critical for the Spartans to get their whole offense running, especially getting the ball to junior center Paul Davis.

"When we're hitting the three, it starts opening things up for Paul," Ager said.

Senior guard Kelvin Torbert, who has struggled himself, says the team needs to get back to fundamentals.

"We have a lot of great shooters, and it's just us sometimes turning good shots into bad shots," Torbert said. "It's just us getting back to basics, getting open looks, knocking them down and getting our confidence back up."

With the tournament season coming up, it will be important for the Spartans to regain their shooting touch.

"In big-time tournament games, every point and every shot counts," Torbert said. "We know we have to make the best of the situations and get everybody back to playing the way they can play."

Going inside

Davis only had three shots in the game, converting on two in scoring eight points and grabbing 12 rebounds for the game, including six on the offensive end.

Izzo was not happy after the game with Davis' workload.

"It's not that we don't want to go in there," Izzo said. "He just didn't get the shots."

Good night

Northwestern head coach Bill Carmody was ejected with 35 seconds left in the first half when he picked up his second technical foul of the evening.

Carmody walked away from his animated argument with an official still yelling and was given the heave-ho from the game.

"It was just normal stuff that coaches do with refs, and I wasn't happy with the way things were going," Carmody said. "But that wasn't the difference in the game. The difference was that we did not start off well. We just dug ourselves too deep of a hole."

Tick-tock

For the first time since Feb. 12, in a regulation game, someone other than Davis played more than 30 minutes on Wednesday.

Along with Davis, both Ager and senior swingman Alan Anderson played 30-plus minutes.