Three takeaways from Michigan State basketball’s loss to Indiana

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Tuesday night’s home loss to a struggling Indiana basketball team is going to leave a bad taste in Michigan State basketball fans’ mouths for a while. In a game that was supposed to be a celebration of Tom Izzo and his legacy at MSU, the Spartans were completely flabbergasted against a zone defense and got absolutely dominated inside by Indiana’s big men.

Below, you can see our three key takeaways from a frustrating night for the Spartans.

Zone defense looks like MSU’s Achilles’ heel

A desperate Indiana team, down 20 to 8 in the first half and in the midst of a five-game losing streak, switched to a zone defense. It worked even better than they probably hope and the Spartans looked completely disoriented the rest of the game. The zone exposed MSU’s poor shooting acumen, and actually led to them having to take point guard Jeremy Fears Jr., who is ostensibly a non-shooter outside of the occasional end-of-shot-clock heave, out of the game.

Earlier this week, I wrote about how I thought teams might start employing more press and zone defense to slow down MSU’s fast break and force them to shoot their way to victory, but I truly thought that Jase Richardson, easily MSU’s best shooter, would be the remedy. While I still think Richardson is their best option against the zone, he also struggled to hit his shots, going 1-for-6 from three. I think if MSU gets into this situation again, I’d like to see them use Jase more as a point guard instead of just swinging the ball around the perimeter, and let him try to get into the paint and try to disrupt the zone.

Interior defense needs to be addressed

Let’s call a spade a spade. MSU was completely dominated by Indiana’s big men. We have seen this in recent years, but the addition of Szymon Zapala seemed to alleviate some of Michigan State’s deficiencies on the interior. I think it might be time to be more realistic about the situation. Looking back at the early schedule, MSU didn’t have to play many elite big men. Indiana has, I would say, the…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/three-takeaways-michigan-state-basketballs-150054349.html

Author : Spartans Wire

Publish date : 2025-02-12 15:00:00

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