Michigan State Basketball: Josh Langford had one of best games in Izzo era

Joshua Langford won’t receive any national attention for it, but he had an all-time game on Tuesday in a big win for Michigan State basketball.

Somehow, the Michigan State basketball team walked out of the Breslin Center with a win on Tuesday night. The fifth-ranked Fighting Illini thought that they had an easy win on their hands, but instead, they’ll be heading home with a frown on their faces.

The Spartans have been playing dramatically improved basketball lately, capturing their second win in a row and their first back-to-back Big Ten wins. Michigan State controlled the game through and through, not allowing Illinois to hold a lead beyond the first few minutes.

One noticeable chance in the game plan was the minutes assigned to players. While normally we saw a spread of players with 15-25 minutes, we only saw four guys play 15 or more minutes. Those guys were Rocket Watts, Gabe Brown, Joshua Langford and Aaron Henry.

Tom Izzo might be onto something with this new lineup, as this team played their best basketball of the year by a mile. Henry played lights-out, Rocket Watts played his best game at point guard this season, and Gabe Brown quietly played strong defense and spread the floor. But one guy stood above them all.

The entire game, we watched Joshua Langford fly around the court, scooping up rebounds on both ends. He finished the game with more rebounds than points, which could normally be a bad thing. The caveat here is that the 5th year player scored 15 points and totaled 16 rebounds. You read that right, he finished the game with a career-high 16 rebounds.

That’s not just his career-high, that’s the highest total of rebounds by any Michigan State basketball player this season and it’s not even close. I don’t know how far back you’d have to go to find more rebounds, but I imagine it would be pretty far back there. He had himself a game.