When asked if he was excited to play against an opponent that utilizes the fast break, senior guard Kalin Lucas smiled.
When the No. 10 seed MSU men’s basketball team and No. 7 seed UCLA meet in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday (9:20 p.m., TBS), it will be a matchup of teams that like to push the ball up the court quickly, as opposed to many Big Ten teams that sit and wait for the shot clock to run down.
Speed is Lucas’ best attribute, and he’s excited to show it off more.
“Man, I can’t wait to play this team,” Lucas said of UCLA. “A team that’s going to be up and down, the fast-tempo game, don’t have to worry about teams stalling it to the last 10, five seconds on the shot clock and then they get a shot off.
“It’s going to be a more up-and-down game, and that’s the type of game I like to play.”
Playing an opponent unfamiliar with MSU’s style is something the Spartans haven’t done since Dec. 22, 2010, when MSU met Texas at Breslin Center.
Since then, it’s been 21 consecutive Big Ten games, regular season and tournament.
“I think they other thing the guys are excited about is, it’s nice when the other team’s not calling out your plays as you’re getting ready to call them out, and that’s what every coach likes about the tournament,” MSU head coach Tom Izzo said.
“Our job is to make sure we’re calling theirs out, but maybe they’re not calling ours out. I don’t know if that’ll happen, but that’s what we’ll try to work for.”
Although the Big Ten might be known for its slow style of play (see Penn State’s 36-33 win against Wisconsin on Friday), the Spartans are excited to take on the challenge of running with the Bruins.
“We’re looking forward to that,” junior forward Draymond Green said. “We know how to play the running game as well. We’ve been called out the past two years on somebody is going to outrun us and they’re going to this and they’re going to do that, and it turns out we outrun them.
“So we can play that game as well.”
It’s all hands on deck, as the entire MSU program is working together to gather film and prepare for UCLA on Thursday. But as important as the preparation is, junior forward Delvon Roe said the final result will be a result of something much simpler.
“We’ve never played this team before, it’s going to come down to who wants it more and who can execute their plays,” Roe said. “We’re not going to know everything they like to do, who they like to go to. It’s not like we’re in conference where we can see this team over and over and over again. It’s really going to come down to, are we going to be able to limit our turnovers, are we going to be able to rebound, stop their inside presence and their fast break?
“If we do that, we will win.”
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