This season, senior guard Travis Trice and junior guard Denzel Valentine will be relied upon to provide a leadership presence the Spartans, at times, lacked last season.
The co-captains of the 2014-15 men’s basketball team were an opening topic for head coach Tom Izzo at the 2014 basketball Big Ten Media Day in Chicago. Similar to his comments made at the first official basketball practice two weeks ago, Izzo said leadership wasn’t necessarily a strength of last year’s team — likely a result of last year’s team not having an official captain.
“Last year just wasn’t — it wasn’t a strength of our team,” Izzo said. “It wasn’t necessarily a weakness, but we had — we didn’t have quite the leadership that I think we have with Travis Trice and Denzel Valentine.”
MSU had a veteran presence with then-senior forward Adreian Payne and then-senior guard Keith Appling last season. But injuries cost the two vets a combined 12 games, lessening the on-count impact of the senior duo.
Trice emerged as a primary option off the bench last season, averaging 7.3 points and 2.3 assists per game in 22.3 minutes off the bench. Trice, along with senior forward Branden Dawson, junior center Matt Costello and Valentine will be relied upon to pick up much of the offensive slack.
“There’s no question, three big losses were Appling, (Gary Harris) and Adrian Payne, but in Appling’s case he had a tough second half of the year and Trice was playing pretty well so he got a lot of experience. And because Payne went down for eight or nine games, Costello got some experience, but our big three will be those three with Dawson being a big key this year.”
Perhaps no Spartan will be under a bigger spotlight than Dawson. The senior forward had perhaps the best stretch of his career at the end of last season, averaging 15.7 points and 8.1 rebounds in seven postseason games. He was also efficient, converting at a 68.1 percent clip.
“Does he take another step up, does he average the 15, 16 points, eight, nine rebounds that he did the last six, seven games of the season once he got back?” Izzo said. “If he does that, I think this team could progress greatly here in the months to come.”
