#15 Michigan State Invades Detroit & Blows Out The Oakland Grizzlies
Little Caesars Arena
Detroit, MI
The #15 Michigan State Spartans came here to Detroit and leave with a win 72-49 over Oakland. They improved to 7-3 on the season.
The Spartans were led by Aaron Henry who had 10 points and six assists. Xavier Tillman had nine points and 13 rebounds. There were no other Spartans in double digits in rebounding or scoring.
Tom Izzo said of the contest, “It was a strange game. I thought we played good enough to shoot it a lot better than we did. We took 33 threes’ which is a joke, but they were mostly because of the way Greg (Kampe, Oakland Coach” decided to guard us. He was probably right in some ways.”
Izzo said, “I have never in all of my time watched Cassius Winston miss that many open threes’ (1/9) that he was just that short on. But what I loved about Cassius today, was that he was better defensively and I loved the fact that in huddles he just accepted that and was fired up for it. He made some great passes and lobs and that is the day you hope to have ten assists and we didn’t do a good job of finishing for him.”
The men in green won the battle of the boards 54-31 and the Spartans had an abysmal 17 turnovers. The Spartans had the lead for 35 of the 40 minutes in the game.
Oakland coach Greg Kampe said of the game, “I am not trying to beat Tom (Izzo) Oakland is trying to beat Michigan State. We are not a good shooting team. If you look at our numbers you see that they are a good defensive team. It was a very physical game that was called consistently and the same both ways. The game was called completely even it was a well-officiated game. We couldn’t score at the rim.”
Izzo’s cagers continued their habit of being unselfish. They had 21 assists on 26 baskets. The Spartans shot 32% from three, 26% from the field and 67% from the charity stripe. Needless to say, the Spartans' poor shooting woes continued.
The team will return to the hard-court Wednesday, December 18, 2019, at Northwestern. That game can be seen on BTN at 8:00 PM.
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