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Welcome to The Final Four Is Not on the Schedule discussion board. A forum for the serious and casual MSU fan. Opinions welcome – stay respectful.
That was much closer than it should have been at the end, but all of us would take a 2-1 record (with the only loss by one point) to start out this gauntlet. November shaping up as a massive success.
The Good:
1. Tyson Walker is a sniper. Playing with such confidence right now. He’s taken his game to another level.
2. Joey and Malik both playing like senior leaders. Such a good 3/4 combo.
3. AJ hitting some threes will give defenses pause when sagging off him. He played an incredible all around game. Very reminiscent of some Denzel Valentine games.
4. Jaden Akins’ dunk brought the house down. Not quite as posteresque as Durrell Summers vs Stanley Robinson, but still impressive athleticism.
5. Pierre Brooks continues to give solid minutes. Would like to see more of him.
6. Three point shooting was incredible today. Came from positions 1-4 which is great.
7. Other than some sloppiness at the end, thought the ball handlers played fast but under control.
8. Thought the rebounding was solid. Did a nice job on both sides of the glass.
The Bad:
1. You can’t blow leads like that. This was a 15 point deficit deep into the second half. Clear loss of focus.
2. Joey needs to understand the team has three timeouts. Call one if getting the ball in is tricky.
3. Eric Dixon got whatever he wanted. Mady came back down closer to reality, and Nova had a clear advantage at the 5 in terms of production.
4. I know they are freshman, and this will be good learning opportunities, but all three are not ready to provide significant minutes against top teams. Hoping come March at least one is ready to make important contributions.
The Injured:
1. Seems like AJ has something ever game. Looked like a cramp and nothing serious.
2. Jaden Akins hobbling is exceptionally alarming. Really anxious to hear an update.
I suspect the guys thought they had already won the game with 5 minutes left and found out about 3 minutes later that they hadn’t, but by then Villanova had enough confidence and momentum to compete evenly with them. I did feel that MSU let Villanova’s best player get wide open from the 3 a little too often in the last minutes. In general, though, their 3-point defense has been pretty impressive this season.
MSU’s guard play made me think they could very well be every bit as good as we hope they could be.
Villanova appeared to be committed to make life hard for MSU in the paint, and that might explain why Mady struggled while the team shot great from the 3.
I just read that Izzo said he was surprised that Hauser made that mistake on the inbound pass in the closing minute of the game because Hauser doesn’t generally make those kind of mistakes, but he must be talking about practice. If I remember correctly, last year in one of the conference tournament games Hauser repeatedly had trouble inbounding the ball in the closing minutes.
@hazelmotes was it the Maryland game last year where they nearly blew a huge lead because they couldn’t inbound the ball? I had flashbacks haha. Luckily it was only one, and they made the defensive stand at the end.
@spartypants I think so. I was at the tournament and remember thinking that Izzo needed to have someone other than Hauser take out the ball as he kept turning it over on the inbound pass.