Michigan State Basketball: 3 thoughts from sluggish win over Northwestern

2. Fouls, ugly fouls, and turnovers

Throughout the entire game, the Spartans struggled with the fouls. They also retreated back to their old ways and had sloppy silly turnovers in this game. The Spartans ended up with 24 fouls and 15 turnovers. This is not the type of line you want to see from your team.

The fouls were ugly fouls. They had several that were iffy calls by the refs but they showed no intention of adjusting to how the refs were calling the game and continued to rack up the fouls. Midway through the second half, the Wildcats were in the double bonus because of all the fouls MSU was committing.

Lucky Northwestern did not shoot well from the line. They were 20-for-30 which is good for 67 percent. If MSU goes up against a better free-throw shooting team, this six-point victory could have easily ended up being a six-point loss had they made more of their free throws.

Along with the ugly fouls, they had several turnovers. Credit goes to this Northwestern team for pressuring the Spartans early on but the turnovers Michigan State was committing were traveling calls and bad passes — unforced errors. This is resorting back to their old habits and that is not what is needed from this team.

They need to continue to build upon their success of not turning the ball over instead of retracting backward.