Michigan State Basketball: Can Spartans be fixed before it’s too late?

Have any sort of pulse in the post

When teams realize that Michigan State doesn’t have much of a post game, they can key on the perimeter and hold guys like Aaron Henry, Rocket Watts, Josh Langford and Gabe Brown in check. Those guys can all score from anywhere on the floor, but when opposing defenses don’t have to worry about defending a dominant big, they can lock down the 3-point line.

We saw against Purdue that the Boilermakers weren’t worried about getting beat down low and the Spartans only scored a handful of buckets down low.

On the flip side, the Boilermakers dominated the Spartans in the post, tripling the production of MSU down there. That’s unacceptable for a Tom Izzo-coached team because he’s strived to have dominant bigs over the years — Xavier Tillman, Nick Ward and Jaren Jackson Jr. most recently.

Will Mady Sissoko inject some life down there? On the defensive end for sure, but the more he plays, the more polished he’s going to be on offense, too. Same goes for Marcus Bingham Jr. who is starting to come along nicely on defense and he’s trying to be more aggressive on offense. Thomas Kithier deserves some credit for his improvement, but he’s not an offensive threat. Malik Hall can be a threat on both ends and deserves big minutes as well.

But Michigan State has avoided passing the ball into the post, having a big back down a defender for a baby-hook or any sort of easy bucket. This needs to change.

Defensively, no more Joey Hauser and Kithier presence at the same time trying to limit a 7-4 big and Trevion Williams. That will never work.

With Luka Garza next on the schedule, we need to see more Mady and Marcus.