Couch: From Jaxon Kohler on down, MSU reignited the possibilities for this season by winning how it did at Illinois

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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — If you take Jaxon Kohler at his word, a couple hours after his career performance at Illinois on Saturday night, after the Spartans’ plane landed and the bus dropped them off at Breslin Center, he was back in the gym, taking shots.

This has been his routine, win or lose, for a while now. Just because the shots finally fell in a game — as he predicted they would at some point — he can’t let up.

“I need to get (a certain) amount of shots up. I need to gain more confidence,” Kohler said, sitting in the locker room at the State Farm Center after scoring 23 points and hitting 4 of 5 3-pointers Saturday night. “Today was a great day to have that confidence, but I’m not going to let that overshadow the work that I still need to put in.”

Kohler’s story at MSU is a development story. Same for much of this MSU team, individually and collectively. Growth and gumption — that’s largely the story of this MSU basketball season, from figuring out how to beat Samford at home in November, to tackling North Carolina like a bat out hell in Maui, to Saturday night, when, facing a gifted opponent, a fierce environment and growing doubts, MSU rallied from 16 points down and then held Illinois scoreless for the final 8:29 while scoring the game’s final 15 points.

MSU’s 79-65 win at Illinois surprised the heck out of anyone who watched the Spartans’ play Indiana on Tuesday night and anyone who’d see the Illini’s last two games — also knowing that Illinois had been waiting for this return game every since the Spartans clipped them in January in East Lansing.

This game wasn’t just won Saturday. This was a sweat equity game, the product of everything before it, including some hard lessons — like, for Kohler, when he missed an open hook shot in the final minute at UCLA and then, after he got the rebound, traveled trying to make a play.

That lesson showed up at Illinois, when, after making three of his first four 3-pointers and two smooth shots on…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/couch-jaxon-kohler-down-msu-121143675.html

Author : Lansing State Journal

Publish date : 2025-02-16 12:11:00

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