Michigan State Basketball: 3 takeaways from blowout win over Butler

Michigan State basketball had its first true road game on Wednesday night as it traveled to one of the nation’s best venues in Hinkle Fieldhouse to face Butler. Michigan State ran away with a 73-52 win in impressive fashion.

Turnovers continued to be an issue for the Spartans, however, as they coughed it up 20 times and lost the turnover battle by six.

In the end, the Spartans pulled away, out-scoring the Bulldogs in each half and turning an eight-point halftime lead into a 21-point victory on the road.

Here are some quick takeaways from the Spartans’ win.

3. Three-point shooting is shaky right now

Before the season, Tom Izzo said that this could be one of his best shooting teams yet but we haven’t quite seen that play out.

The Spartans did shoot over 45 percent from the floor but they were an ugly 8-for-24 from deep. That’s just not going to cut it against better teams when you shoot the ball that many times from 3-point range. Making 33 percent of their threes doesn’t seem awful, but a lot of them came later in the game. They started out ice-cold from deep.

Gabe Brown was a solid 4-for-10 from deep and Max Christie was 2-for-4, but we’ll touch on those two and their games in a minute.

The rest of the team combined to shoot 2-for-10 from distance. That’s not ideal.

Michigan State is going to have to find its stroke because it had some wide-open looks that just didn’t fall (looking at you, Joey Hauser).