How MSU Impacted by Injury to Louisville Star Mikel Brown Jr.
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Perhaps the most talented player on Louisville's roster will not be playing on Saturday.
Point guard Mikel Brown Jr. was officially ruled out for the sixth-seeded Cardinals' NCAA Tournament game against (3) Michigan State on Saturday when both teams released their initial availability report on Friday night. Brown might be a top-10 pick in the upcoming NBA Draft this year and has averaged 18.2 points and 4.7 assists per game across 21 contests for UL this season.
This will end up being the sixth consecutive game that Brown has missed with a back injury that also sidelined him for a bit earlier in the season. Louisville is 8-5 this season when Brown does not play and is 16-5 when he does.
MSU ruled out Divine Ugochukwu and Kaleb Glenn for the game on the availability report, but Glenn has been known to be done for the season since last summer with a knee injury, and Ugochukwu was ruled out for the year in early February with a foot injury. The absence of Brown won't catch the Spartans off guard, either; UL released a statement on Wednesday that ruled him out for the entire first weekend.
How Things Change
Somebody else will be running Louisville's offense instead. That person is senior Ryan Conwell. He played 37 minutes in UL's first-round win over (11) South Florida, scoring 18 points with six assists, but also turning it over six times. Conwell has averaged 20.6 points, 5.0 rebounds, and 2.8 assists (to 3.2 turnovers) in the latest five games that Brown has missed.
Conwell is more of a score-first guard. That was supposed to be his main role with Brown, but he's finding ways to adjust. What's true, no matter what, is he's going to get his shots up. Conwell has attempted 314 three-pointers this year, the most in the entire country. He's made 107 of them, which is good for a mark of 34.1%.
This is still going to be a very tough assignment for Spartans point guard Jeremy Fears Jr. Conwell has more size than him at 6-foot-4, and Fears cannot afford to be as aggressive as he'd maybe like to be on the defensive end because Michigan State simply cannot afford him to get into foul trouble.
MSU has sometimes shifted freshman Jordan Scott onto the primary ball-handler to help protect Fears from that. Louisville two-guard Isaac McKneely is also 6-foot-4 and is more of a three-point specialist (less risk of fouling), so that could be a shift Tom Izzo opts for in his defensive strategy.
Also worth noting is that the loss of Brown has seemed to force Louisville to take the ball into the paint on offense more often. The Cardinals take a ton of threes: 52.7% of their shots this season have been from behind the arc, which is the fourth-highest mark in the country. UL's three-point ratio has been below its season average in eight of its 13 games without Brown, which includes the last four games in a row.
Michigan State's defense is generally content with teams taking threes, though. Across the entire season, 45.9% of the shots from MSU's opponents have been for three, which is the fourth-largest ratio among NCAA Tournament teams. It'll be interesting to see how the Cardinals' shot diet looks on Saturday afternoon.
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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