3 Predictions for Michigan State's Game against Indiana
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Only one visiting team entered the Breslin Center last season and came out with a victory: Indiana.
No. 12 Michigan State is potentially searching for some revenge over the Hoosiers, but the main similarities between this IU team and last season’s are the name and crimson and white colors. Indiana fired head coach Mike Woodson last offseason and replaced him with Darian DeVries, who was coaching West Virginia. Nearly the entire Hoosiers roster is different.
Classifying Tuesday’s game (7 p.m. ET, Peacock) as easy would be overconfident. Yes, this is a game MSU should win, Indiana is an opponent that borders on Quad 1 difficulty. The Spartans are entering at 14-2 overall and 4-1 during Big Ten play. IU is 12-4 and 3-2, respectively.
So, how will the game go? I’ve got three things in mind that I think will happen, along with a final score prediction at the very end.
Indiana Shoots Lots of Threes
Very few college basketball teams like to shoot the three-ball more than Indiana. The Hoosiers’ ratio of two-point shots to three-point shots is pretty much 1:1. They’ve taken 465 threes this season, and they’ve taken 467 twos.
Taking that many threes is a little bit unusual. The final percentage of 49.9% of attempts being from beyond the arc is the 18th-largest percentage in college basketball, according to KenPom. That’s out of 365 teams, which puts the Hoosiers’ three-point ratio in the 95th percentile.
Michigan State also forces its opponents to take a lot of three-point attempts; 46.6% of the shot attempts MSU ends up defending are from beyond the arc. KenPom says that that’s the 19th-largest percentage in the sport as well.
The Spartans have faced two other teams that take a higher percentage of threes than Indiana: Cornell and Nebraska. MSU surrendered 28 made threes during those two games on 81 tries, coming out to a mark of 34.6%. For the season, Indiana has made 36.3% of its threes (63rd in Division I); Michigan State’s opponents have shot 30.3% (53rd).
MSU Gets on the Break
One of the effects that has been visible from the Spartans’ loss at Nebraska is that it’s probably best to somewhat abandon the offensive glass to get back on defense quicker, forcing MSU to run its half-court offense. Northwestern did this a bit last Thursday. Tom Izzo and Michigan State love to try and generate quick looks on the fastbreak, sometimes even following made baskets, that’s been known for years, decades, even.
Here’s the thing: if beating MSU was as able as taking away the fastbreak, someone would have done it by now. Zone defense has been jokingly considered Izzo’s kryptonite for a long time, but if playing a 2-3 zone, like what Jim Boeheim did at Syracuse, was all it took to neutralize Michigan State’s offense, everyone would’ve figured it out long before Izzo’s 31st season.
Experience does matter for coaches during Big Ten play. Nebraska’s Fred Hoiberg is more knowledgeable about what works against Izzo’s offenses, because he’s faced him a bunch of times.
DeVries does not have past experiences of going up against Izzo and the little adjustments it takes. The same goes for Izzo facing DeVries’ system, but the benefit of the doubt nearly always rests with the Hall of Famer in these situations.
Another Double-Double for Kohler
Not the world’s biggest hot take, since senior forward Jaxon Kohler literally averages one, but I think Kohler gets a double-double in this game again. Michigan State’s top big man has done it nine times in 16 games, and there is reason to believe that the double-double counter reaches double digits in this one.
One reason is that Indiana does not have a rebounder who can truly challenge Kohler on the glass. IU’s leading rebounder, Tucker DeVries (son of Darian), averages 5.1 rebounds per game. Just behind him is Sam Alexis at 4.9 per game. Kohler averages a little more than both of them combined at 10.1 per game.
Secondly, and this is just a hunch, I just think Kohler is going to try to go for one. He recently had a string of five consecutive double-doubles, but has fallen short in each of the last two games by virtue of “only” grabbing eight rebounds during each game against USC and Northwestern.
Kohler is not going to sit in the locker room postgame and tell the media he truly wanted one. Regardless, he seems like the type of competitor to me who will set an individual goal and chase it, but not in a way that will harm the team. I’ll be surprised if he’s boxing out Carson Cooper during a game anytime soon.
Final Prediction: Michigan State 78, Indiana 68
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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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