Before Michigan State lost three of its last four games, the Spartans’ next game — this Saturday night at Illinois — was one I had circled.
The first meeting felt like two heavyweights, with MSU edging Illinois 80-78 on Jan. 19. The Illini thought the outcome would have been different had their star freshman guard Kasparas Jakucionis not been in foul trouble. Who knows? It certainly didn’t seem like a game the Spartans would have won without the backing of the Breslin Center crowd.
Now, with MSU struggling to find the mojo it had back then and in danger of falling from touching distance in the Big Ten title race, and Illinois fans frothing at the mouth to welcome the Spartans to the State Farm Center to set the record straight, the game is every bit as interesting as it ever was. And, for MSU, it might be actually be a good time for this matchup.
It could go horribly, of course. But the Spartans could also be better off right now not facing an opponent they’re supposed to beat. They played so tight against Indiana on Tuesday night with so much at stake and in front of so many people they didn’t want to disappoint.
Now MSU (19-5, 10-3 Big Ten) is potentially walking into a buzzsaw, a game no one expects the Spartans to win. It’s a game that’s a challenge all its own, beyond the Big Ten title chase. If MSU somehow wins, it’ll calm the waters, put the Spartans back in the hunt and reinvigorate all the possibilities for this season.
History says it’s not yet time to panic
It’s is important to remember that the bump in the road MSU is enduring right now is not out of the ordinary for MSU’s best seasons in recent times. In fact, just about every MSU basketball season you might look back on fondly over the last 15 years included a similar swoon in February or late January.
Remember that 2020 MSU basketball season, the Cassius Winston-Xavier Tillman team which, if not for the pandemic, would have won a national championship, we all agree — here’s how I led my 3 quick takes column on Feb. 8, 2020, after a 77-68 loss to Michigan, the Spartans’ third straight defeat, which dropped them to 16-8 and 8-5 in the Big Ten:
“This Michigan State team needs to find something we’re not yet seeing. That’s its only shot at getting back in the Big Ten championship race or a prolonged postseason run. Right now, it’s a team that just doesn’t have enough — enough natural scorers, enough shooting, enough size, enough grit.”
Exactly a month later, MSU played that memorable March 8 finale at Breslin to clinch a share of a conference championship.
A year earlier, the Spartans’ season ended in the Final Four, also after a Big Ten championship. But on Feb. 5, after a third straight loss, this time at Illinois, I wrote this about the Spartans after they’d fallen to 18-5 and 9-3 (a win less than this year’s record):
“Michigan State doesn’t look right. That’s the quick and dirty analysis after a game like this — a third straight loss, a second to an underwhelming foe, this time unraveling out of the gate against an opponent whose defense is designed to do exactly that. MSU’s second-half comeback in Tuesday night’s 79-74 loss at Illinois didn’t have the teeth of earlier second-half runs. It’s deeper than that, obviously, as the Spartans try to figure out how to recapture who they were just two weeks ago.”
Sounds familiar.
The Spartans also lost three straight in January in 2016, despite having senior Denzel Valentine back healthy. In 2015, long before that MSU team’s improbable Final Four run, there was a fair bit of misery. In 2014, before the dominant Big Ten tournament and run to the Elite Eight, there were six losses in February. In 2012, the Draymond Green-led Spartans dropped three of five in late January, before winning a Big Ten championship.
In other words, the last four games and three losses shouldn’t be reason to think this season can’t still have a satisfying finish and thrilling moments ahead. For this program’s better teams in the Tom Izzo era, recovering from a bad three-game stretch has become as predictable as the bad stretch itself.
Shooting is a concern
The question is whether this MSU team has the goods to pull itself out of its funk and keep growing — like it did for the first three months of the season — and whether it has the grit to take on an unforgiving schedule the rest of the way.
If it’s to happen the way it did for those other MSU teams, these Spartans will need consistently impactful point guard play out of Jeremy Fears Jr. — no more nights like Tuesday — and to begin to shoot from the perimeter at a clip they haven’t most of the season. Or start taking a lot less 3s.
None of those aforementioned MSU teams that recovered from mid-season slumps shot worse than 35.4% from beyond the arc in conference play. A couple of them shot better than 40% collectively. MSU this Big Ten season is shooting 31.6% from long range. That’s second to last and nowhere near good enough. That was clear Tuesday night, as the Spartans missed a number of open 3s, finishing 4-for-23 from long range, after going 5-for-22 and 5-for-15, respectively, in the two losses in Los Angles.
Saturday’s come-from-behind win over Oregon is the only time since the beginning of January that MSU has made more than 33% of its 3s in a game, other than at Northwestern, when the Spartans took just eight and made four.
That’s a legitimate reason for concern. You can’t win a league title or anything substantive in March shooting like this from beyond the arc.
But the Spartans have also been pretty dang good most of the season being exactly who they are. Saturday’s game at Illinois will give us a sense of whether that has a chance to be enough.
MORE: Couch: Inside Jase Richardson’s road from career-threatening surgery to MSU basketball revelation
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on X @Graham_Couch and on BlueSky @GrahamCouch.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: MSU basketball head to Illinois for a game that’s mighty interesting
