3 Things MSU Basketball Proved During Huge Week
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The optimism around Michigan State basketball has not felt higher this season than right now.
MSU, now ranked eighth in the country, is coming off its best week of the season. The Spartans not only took down then-No. 8 Purdue on the road on Thursday, but then handled their business against Indiana on Sunday.
Tom Izzo described that week and those two wins as “monstrous” for his team following the IU game. That’s for good reason: Michigan State is starting to resolve several of its biggest questions that have been had about it throughout the season.
March is the time for a team to be playing its best basketball. MSU seems to be doing that now for these couple of reasons:
Limited, but Effective Bench Play
One of the latest major concerns about this team had been the team’s bench scoring. Last year’s team relied on its “strength in numbers” quite a bit — the 2024-25 Spartans averaged 33.6 points per game from their bench, which was seventh in the country and first in the Big Ten. This year, Michigan State has gotten 22.0 bench points per contest, which ranks much less ceremoniously at 167th nationally and sixth in the conference.
MSU isn’t going to get 33 or 34 bench points per game often. The team’s share of minutes that have gone to non-starters has dropped from 40.0% (20th nationally) last season to 32.9% (156th) this year, according to KenPom. The Spartans cannot routinely give 10+ players serious playing time every single time out now; only seven players are routinely getting double-digit minutes now.
The two bench players Michigan State is relying on are Kur Teng and Cam Ward. Both of them are starting to play better, with Teng particularly doing so lately. He just scored a career-high 18 points against Indiana, with his six made three-pointers accounting for all of it. Teng has quietly hit multiple threes in five of MSU’s last six games, shooting 17-for-36 (47.2%) across that stretch. His season-wide three-point percentage has risen up to 38.7%.
Ward is also becoming more assertive by the game. He usually doesn’t have the most flashy box score out there, but he has consistently been a plus player for the Spartans lately and has seemed to gain confidence after dipping a bit due to the wrist injury he suffered earlier in the season.
Road Woes End
Michigan State had been pretty bad during road games prior to this week. The Spartans entered the week with a 4-3 road record, but those wins against Penn State, Washington, Oregon, and Rutgers were generally not games that inspired tons of confidence and also were not in actual hostile environments.
When MSU had gone into arenas where some hatred and energy was in the air, it had not gone great. The loss at Nebraska was close, but the more recent game against Wisconsin was a total blowout. Minnesota wasn’t even a very difficult atmosphere, and yet the Spartans trailed the entire way in that game.
Getting Mackey Arena and Assembly Hall in back-to-back games should not mean good things are coming. Michigan State hadn’t won in West Lafayette in 12 years, losing seven straight to Purdue, and had also lost its last two games in Bloomington.
The Spartans showed that they can handle these places now. They looked comfortable playing on a court that didn’t have any green on it. With the final games that MSU’s season will ultimately be judged by coming up, this team needed to show that it can perform without the benefit of a friendly crowd. If you can handle a hostile crowd, you can handle a neutral one. That’s one of the important things about this week.
‘Winning Time’ Performance
Michigan State struggled to win close games against quality opponents earlier in the season. It had a slim lead late against Duke, but got out-played at the end. The Spartans had a three-point lead with four minutes to go against Nebraska. They were right there with Michigan until the end.
Something might have shifted during MSU’s game against Illinois. The Spartans trailed for most of the game, but ended up getting the game to overtime, where they scratched their way to a big win. Since then, Michigan State has been the team finding ways to win at the end of games, particularly with its defense.
Against Purdue, MSU got three stops in the final minute to close out that win. Against the Hoosiers, the Spartans’ defense buckled down at the end and forced IU to miss seven of its final eight shots and only allowed two points in the final six minutes.
This is what a team capable of going to the Final Four looks like. The question is whether Michigan State can keep it up. We’ll see if it does.
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A 2025 graduate from Michigan State University, Cotsonika brings a wealth of experience covering the Spartans from Rivals and On3 to his role as Michigan State Spartans Beat Writer on SI. At Michigan State, he was also a member of the world-renowned Spartan marching band for two seasons.
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