Spartans Take Down EMU 66-46 While Dawson Suffers Wrist Injury

Spartans Take Down EMU 66-46 While Dawson Suffers Wrist Injury Breslin Center East Lansing, MI The Spartans had drilled into them coming into tonight’s

Spartans Take Down EMU 66-46 While Dawson Suffers Wrist Injury

Breslin Center

East Lansing, MI

The Spartans had drilled into them coming into tonight’s game with EMU that the Eagles had beaten arch rival UM in Ann Arbor on December 9, 2014 45-42. Izzo warned them for good reason, but also implored them to make a statement. They did just that routing EMU 66-46.

Super freshman Javon Bess got his first playing time of his collegiate career. He played nine minutes (all in the 2nd half) and had one point and five rebounds. Izzo said of his freshman’s first performance that, “Javon Bess plays nine minutes and gets five rebounds. We are missing a tough guy and he is one.”

Bess told me in the locker room after that game that, “I am so blessed to be a basketball player and a player at Michigan State. To get back out there and to be able to heal as fast as I did. I was so excited and just anxious, that is why I thank my coaches and seniors for calming me down.”

Unfortunately that wasn’t the story.

Heading into tonight Branden Dawson had 999 career points. He put in only four for the game, but he did eclipse the milestone. He is the 46th Spartan in history to do that. That was the good news. The bad news was midway through the second half he went down hard on his wrist and when he finally got up he had ice on his wrist and did not see any more action.

MSU head coach Tom Izzo said of his stars injury that it was not broken, but badly sprained. Dawson told me that, “Feels good. Swollen now and I can hardly move it.”

On the night the Eagles shot an abysmal 23% and the Spartans a paltry 38%. Bryn Forbes was the leading scorer for MSU with 14. Travis Trice had 13 and Marvin Clark dropped in 11. Matt Costello had 10 points and led the team with 9 rebounds.

EMU head coach Rob Murphy said of the contest, “Obviously anytime you lose it is extremely tough. I thought Michigan State did an excellent job defending us. Defensively they were very sound. We were up against tradition, history and a hall of fame coach. Michigan State did a great job on help defense.”

Besides the injury to Dawson and play of Bess, Izzo said of the contest that, “I thought we did some real good things. I thought a lot of the bad things we did you have to give Eastern Michigan credit. I thought Travis Trice played his best game for us. I thought Trice ran our team, at timeouts he was phenomenal and that was his best game.”

The Spartans had 17 assists on 20 total field goals. Even with cold shooting their amazing unselfishness continues.

The Spartans return to action on Saturday night against Texas Southern at 5 PM. That game can be seen on ESPNU.