Michigan State Basketball: Positives and negatives from EMU win

The negatives

As I’ve said before, the Spartans didn’t leave us with too many negatives despite a scoreline that was a little bit too close for comfort. Overall, the team played well and the mistakes that were made didn’t surprise anybody.

The first noticeable negative was the turnovers. At this point, I’d be more worried if Michigan State basketball played a season-opener without an egregious amount of turnovers. Throughout the course of the game, the Spartans accumulated 18 turnovers, a number that doubled Eastern Michigan’s total. Thankfully, MSU played rock-solid defense and kept Eastern out of the game.

In all the action of the game, one of the more exciting players on this team disappeared into the shadows in this early season matchup. The player that we all thought would have the 20-point game didn’t start the game. When Rocket Watts game in, he didn’t shoot well or pass well and overall, he looked like the number two guy. That being said, he started slow last season, so there is no cause for alarm just quite yet.

The last bit of worry also came toward the end of the game when Mady Sissoko found his way to the free throw line twice late in the game. While he was showing out on the defensive end, it looked like the free throw line was completely foreign to him. On four attempts, he couldn’t hit a single one. It’s hard to say whether this was just early nerves or whether he’ll actually continue to struggle at the line. Either way, it’ll be something that Izzo will have him working on in practice.