Michigan State Basketball: Final grades for the 2021-22 season

With an up and down season, Michigan State basketball ended its 2021-2022 campaign in the second round of the tournament against Duke.

Tom Izzo ended the season with Michigan State basketball winning the first game of the NCAA tournament against Davidson followed by a nine-point loss to Duke. The Spartans had a very up-and-down season, one filled with being consistently inconsistent.

Many players shined this season but could not keep that spotlight on them as they disappeared in the next few games. AJ Hoggard, Malik Hall, Max Christie, Gabe Brown, all of these players and more were the reasons why the Spartans won games this year but none of them could step up and become the leader and will their way to a victory when Michigan State needed it most.

We will be in looking at how each player ranked this season and what I think their final grades should be. We will also look at the team categories and how each one would rate as well.

Offense: B

The Spartans were able to eclipse a 20-win season without having a true standout leader on the offensive end. They were led by a different player each game and had to come together as a team in order to win some of these hard-fought games.

The Spartans had many games where they went on scoring lulls and could not make a basket. They had games where this shooting drag went on from three, four, five, and even six minutes and when that happened, the defense and the confidence started to disappear and they dug themselves a hole they sometimes could not pull out of. This was partly due to the high volume of turnovers at the beginning of the year but it slowly got better as the end of the year approached.

The Spartans’ bright spot was their shooting from deep. They were able to shoot 38 percent from 3-point range this season which was good for 16th in the nation along with second in the Big Ten. The Spartans had seven players who shot more than 40 3-pointers this season and six of those players shot better than 38 percent.

The lone player who could not shoot at a high rate was Max Christie who had a down season from a shooting perspective but that may be because he was tasked with a high volume of minutes guarding the best opposing player and needing to be offensively effective. Being just a freshman, that can take a toll on a player both mentally and physically.