In November, the MSU men’s basketball team was ranked No. 8 in the country before even setting foot on the hardwood for an exhibition game.
Since then, they’ve fallen to the likes of Grand Valley State and Iowa, but jumped to the best start in 109 years of Spartans basketball.
Halfway through the Big Ten season, the team is 7-2 in the conference, 19-3 overall and ranked 11th in the country. What does that mean for the Spartans and their ultimate goals – a Big Ten championship and beyond?
Progress reports are in.
When the two captains are members of the backcourt, it places a lot of pressure on the men handling the ball – senior Drew Neitzel and junior Travis Walton.
Neitzel, the preseason Big Ten Player of the Year, went through a highly scrutinized slump early in the conference season, averaging 7.6 points per game in his first three Big Ten games. Later, Neitzel would admit that maybe he was playing for the wrong reasons – focusing on pressure and post-college plans. He then returned to take home a Big Ten Player of the Week honor. Despite his brief scoring slump, the four-year starter ranks third in the country with an assist-turnover ratio of 3.33 to 1.
Walton, the team’s most relentless defender, has shown flashes of brilliance in terms of his energy and ability to bring the team together. Ranked No. 3 in the conference with 4.59 assists per game (and Neitzel right behind him with 4.55), Walton has personified unselfish basketball.
Grade: 3.25
The name of the game for this season’s big men has been inconsistency. Head coach Tom Izzo has constantly called on Marquise Gray, Drew Naymick, Goran Suton and Raymar Morgan to bring their A-game every night. While Suton leads the team with five double-doubles and Morgan leads with 16 points per game, Izzo expects more from them.
Unexpected contributions have come from Naymick on the offensive side of the ball. Now, with 109 career blocks, Naymick has solidified his place in MSU history as one of the program’s toughest inside defenders with MSU’s career blocks record.
For the Spartans to succeed, they need the bigs to step up. In Gray’s career, the team is 13-1 when he scores in double digits, while Morgan has been in foul trouble for both of the team’s conference losses.
Grade: 2.5
Coming into this season, the Spartan community recognized that Izzo had a top-notch recruiting class in Kalin Lucas, Chris Allen and Durrell Summers, who came into their MSU careers as top-60 national recruits.
But not many people were expecting such immediate results.
Lucas is averaging 11.9 points per game during conference play, with Allen and Summers averaging close to five. The three combined for about 45 minutes per game in the last nine games.
With games of nine and seven assists, Lucas is showing flashes of the next great MSU point guard.
The one thing that Izzo will concede is that his freshmen need to work on their defense.
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Grade: 3.75
Izzo said the hardest time to be a leader is when your personal performance is down. Neitzel admitted that he was focused on other elements of his game rather than playing for his teammates and himself – resulting in a scoring slump. Maybe all it took for the senior guard to come around was that reality check. He only has four home games left in the Green and White, and he’s determined to make them count.
Coming into this season, Naymick averaged 2.1 points and 2.4 rebounds per game, while seeming to be on track for a backseat to Suton. Both Naymick’s numbers have increased – 3.7 points and 3.9 rebounds per game this year and an increase in shooting percentage of 20 percent from last season – as he’s had the opportunity to start.
Grade: 3.0
In both conference losses, Izzo has claimed responsibility for the lack of energy, discipline, intensity, respect – you name it. However, it is up to the coaching staff to teach the team how to win big games that come down to the wire.
The players revere the assistant coaches and would tell you there hasn’t been a game when Mark Montgomery, Mike Garland and Dwayne Stephens prepared an imperfect game plan. But even Izzo has said at times that his assistants need to step up.
Grade: 3.5
The Spartans have shown flashes of Final Four brilliance and, at times, have displayed the ability to bring home a Big Ten title. But with losses at Iowa and Penn State and other close calls against lesser foes, there’s plenty of speculation. Fortunately, Izzo knows what he wants of his players and he’s not going to stop pressing them until he gets the results he desires. A title run is possible, but the Green and White still have a lot to prove.
Grade: 3.25
