Yes, the Spartans are just three games above .500, but there were so many positives to take out of Tuesday’s 71-61 loss to No. 2 Ohio State.

The Spartans scored an incredible 44 points in the paint, shot 57 percent from the field and outrebounded the Buckeyes, 29-19. It was an old-fashioned Spartan effort.

But much like recent Spartan teams, turnovers bit the team at the worst possible time.

MSU turned the ball over 20 times.

Nine of the 10 Spartans who played had a least one turnover, but for the second-straight game, all the Spartans who played grabbed at least one rebound. It was a complete team effort — other than Summers, who played 16 minutes and was scoreless on one field-goal attempt.

Ohio-native and freshman center Adreian Payne turned in the best performance of his career with 10 points and two rebounds.

Another Ohio-native and sophomore center Garrick Sherman had his best performance in a while with six points and two rebounds and fellow sophomore center Derrick Nix had seven points and one rebound.

In all, eight different Spartans scored and senior guard Mike Kebler had maybe his best game of his career with eight points.

There were too many positive things that happened in the game for Spartan fans to come away upset. The odds of beating the Buckeyes were extremely low. Couple that with Roe’s injury and Summers’ disappearance and you can’t be anything but encouraged with the Spartans.
The final stretch starts with College GameDay on Saturday.

Don’t count the Spartans out yet, their head coach isn’t.

“This team is pretty good if we can regroup a little bit here down the stretch,” Izzo said.
“I think we can still do something.”

Chris Vannini is a State News sports reporter. He can be reached at vanninic@msu.edu.