Michigan State basketball: Report card for big road win at Penn State

In need of a win on the road in order to avoid a three-game losing streak and begin the season 5-5, Michigan State basketball went into a hostile Bryce Jordan Center and took down a 6-2 Penn State team, 67-58, on Wednesday night.

The win vaults the Spartans to 1-1 in conference play after a massively disappointing home loss to Northwestern, but this has to calm some of the hot takes after that defeat.

Now let’s hand out some grades for the Spartans in the win, by position.

Centers: B-

This may not seem like a fair grade for Mady Sissoko and Carson Cooper (only one minute played) because they didn’t make a ton of mistakes, but zero points came from this group.

Mady’s defense improved the grade from a C to a B- but his offense was nowhere to be found. You can’t just play one end of the floor.

I’d throw Jaxon Kohler in here and it might bump the unit up to B/B+ but he is listed as a forward on the official roster and I don’t want to hear about “he’s officially a forward” when he played some five on Wednesday night with Sissoko struggling a bit.

Mady took just one shot from the floor (it was ugly) and he had two turnovers and two fouls. He had a rough start to the game but rebounded quite nicely on defense to play 18 solid minutes, but I’d love to see the Mady we saw from the first two weeks of the season more consistently.