3 Big Takeaways from MSU's Road Triumph at Indiana
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BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Michigan State is morphing back into a team that can make noise at the end of the season again.
It’s March now, and that means it’s time for every team to be aiming to play its best basketball. No. 13 MSU — which will be hard to keep out of the top 10 when the AP Poll is updated on Monday — looks like a team that is peaking at the appropriate time: March. The Spartans went into Assembly Hall and led wire-to-wire against Indiana on Sunday evening, winning their fourth straight game, 77-64.
“Winning at Indiana is always a big win,” Tom Izzo said after the game. “For us, it was a monstrous week.”
This was the 29th game of the season for Michigan State, which also beat No. 8 Purdue on the road on Thursday, but this team is finding new ways to surprise people. Here are three of the biggest takeaways from Sunday’s win:
Watch Tom Izzo Discuss Below...
Kur Teng is Clutch
Sophomore guard Kur Teng had his loudest, and maybe best, performance during his career at MSU. Teng drilled six three-pointers, several of them being of the demoralizing variety to the home crowd, to finish with a career-high 18 points.
Those threes were demoralizing for a reason. Teng wasn’t piling on at the end of a big Spartan run where things felt like they were going well. His threes were largely happening when it felt like things were shifting in Indiana’s direction.
Multiple of his long-balls came with the Assembly Hall crowd standing up and trying to push its team further when they sensed that a run was brewing. That run never came: the longest unanswered run for IU on Sunday was just five points.
This might be the type of player Teng is now. He made that huge three-pointer in the closing moments of regulation against then-No. 5 Illinois last month, and he was coming off a game where he made three three-pointers (those being important ones, too) at Purdue and Mackey Arena. In big games and in big moments, Teng has shown up and made big shot after big shot.
Jaxon Kohler Returning to Form
Somebody else who really took a big step forward in this one is senior forward Jaxon Kohler. His 21 points are a season-high for him, but he also grabbed 13 rebounds. Kohler has been slumping for about a month and a half now, and this feels like the type of game that can break him out of it.
“That’s the advantage of being a senior and being around four years: you’ve gotta be able to take it, and you’ve gotta be able to understand it,” Izzo said about Kohler. “And to his credit, we went at him, and he delivered. Boy, and then he hit a couple of those threes… that gives us a whole ‘nother dimension.”
It simply looked like the version of Kohler from earlier in the year. He was more assertive down low, and he also drained some three-pointers of his own on Sunday, going 3-of-5 from deep. Kohler also grabbed nine of his rebounds during the second half, with five of them being on the offensive glass. Those are the plays that can help make the difference when playing on the road.
Michigan State is a better team when Kohler is a larger part of it. With Indiana not having a ton of size, it seemed like that’s what MSU wanted in this game, especially early on when they were able to get a couple of mismatches on 6-foot-1 guard Conor Enright.
Sources of Big Games Feel Unknown Again
One reason last year’s team became successful was its depth. The Spartans could solidly play 10 or 11 players any given night, and they would be the team with the fresher legs pretty much every time down the stretch of a close game. This year’s team isn’t as deep, but there is one quality that it is starting to take from it: opponents don’t seem to know who is going to have the big performance again.
There was a phase this season where it was all about Jeremy Fears Jr. From the first meeting with IU on Jan. 13 to the Illinois game on Feb. 5, Fears led MSU in both points and assists six times in eight games. Asking that much from one guy is not a good thing.
Michigan State has found a way to adjust. Fears technically shared the team lead with 21 points on Sunday, but that’s partially because he made a couple of free throws at the end with the game’s result decided. Kohler and Teng felt like the true offensive stars.
It’s no longer clear where MSU is going to get its points on any given night anymore. Kohler can go off. Teng can go off. Fears can go off. Coen Carr can go off. When playing a team like Indiana, the Spartans know that the points are going to come from Lamar Wilkerson and Tucker DeVries. It’s a real psychological advantage when the other team’s coaches and players don’t know which player or players will end up being the one(s) to step up.
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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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