Junior forward Raymar Morgan reacts to a foul being called against him during the game against The Citadel at Breslin Center. Morgan lead the Spartans with 26 points and 10 rebounds. The Spartans won, 79-65.
Considered a tune-up game before this weekend’s date with Texas, a middling team from South Carolina gave the MSU men’s basketball team all it could handle.
The Citadel, which came into the game with a 5-5 record, hung around with No. 19 MSU for a full 40 minutes Wednesday before eventually losing 79-65 in front of an Izzone-less crowd at Breslin Center.
“I’m at a loss of words to tell you how I felt about tonight’s game,” MSU head coach Tom Izzo said. “I don’t think we respected our opponent, I don’t think we respected the game of basketball the way we played. It shows that were not as mature as I hoped we’d be.”
The Spartans (7-2 overall) didn’t allow The Citadel to come within eight points in the second half, but they couldn’t pull ahead by more than 15 until less than two minutes remained.
Seemingly every time the Spartans looked poised to put a chokehold on the game, the Bulldogs countered with a clutch 3-pointer that kept the Spartans sweating bullets. The Citadel finished 10-for-25 from behind the arc.
“I thought our talk on the bench and the reaction from our guys to keep playing and go on to the next play was an improvement and showed maturity and toughness,” The Citadel head coach Ed Conroy said. “Our guys are starting to show some resilience; it’s tough to come into this environment and maintain your composure.”
MSU junior Raymar Morgan finished with a game-high 26 points and 10 rebounds, sophomore Chris Allen scored 12 and senior center Goran Suton added four in his first game back from arthroscopic surgery on his left knee.
Delvon Roe (10 points, seven rebounds) and Durrell Summers (12 points, 3-for-4 shooting) also reached double-figures for the Spartans, who shot 53 percent from the field.
“Thank God for Raymar, and I thought Delvon played awfully well,” Izzo said. “Those two guys I think kept us in there, we just didn’t get much play out of any other guys.”
Forward Austin Dahn scored 17 points and guard Cameron Wells added 14 to pace the Bulldogs, who scored almost half their points from 3-point territory. The Citadel shot a better percentage (40) from beyond the arc than it did from the rest of the field (38.2).
“It just wasn’t our night tonight,” Morgan said. “We just had a lot of defensive errors that I know we could have corrected. We didn’t hit the boards like we wanted to, we just didn’t play within ourselves like I knew we could.”
In addition to 3-point defense, the Spartans perpetuated their struggles from the free throw line, hitting just 23-of-35 attempts. Defensive rebounding was also an issue, as the Spartans allowed The Citadel to collect 15 offensive boards.
“I thought our rebounding was awful, our passing was awful and our recognition on the break wasnt very good,” Izzo said.
Suton, the Big Ten’s leading returning rebounder, missed the last six games with a knee injury he suffered against Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne. Wearing matching black braces on each knee, he tallied five rebounds in 17 minutes.
“I got my strength and my balance and everything back,” said Suton, who some speculated wouldn’t be ready until Dec. 27 against Oakland. “It was just a matter of doctors clearing me and I told coach I was ready.”
Despite a discouraging finish, the Spartans got off a torrid start. Kalin Lucas (seven points, eight assists) earned trips to the charity stripe on three of MSU’s first five possessions and Roe converted a steal into a rim-rattling dunk to key an 8-0 scoring run out of the gates.
Morgan shouldered the offensive burden for the next several minutes, scoring 13 points and hitting all six of his field goal attempts to help MSU extend its lead to 18 points.
But unlike Alcorn State on Saturday, The Citadel refused to go away.
Dahn and forward Jonathan Brick hit 3-pointers and forward Bryan Streeter converted Travis Walton’s second turnover of the half into a breakaway basket, as the Bulldogs closed the half on a 14-4 run and trailed 41-33 at intermission.
Walton finished with zero points and five turnovers.
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Morgan picked up where he left off in the second half, banging inside for six of MSU’s first eight points to keep his team ahead comfortably, but The Citadel continued to burn the Spartans from deep and kept the game within striking distance.
However, the Bulldogs never got within three possessions of the Spartans, and Allen iced the game with his first 3-pointer of the contest.
On deck for the Spartans is No. 5 Texas, who survived a scare of its own Tuesday against winless Texas Southern. Tip-off is Saturday at 2 p.m. in Houston.
