Michigan State basketball: Jaden Akins is on one heck of a hot streak

Jaden Akins’ offseason was cut short because of a foot injury and every Michigan State football fan immediately murmured, “Here we go again.”

Foot injuries and Michigan State basketball go together like peanut butter and jelly and Akins was just the latest to suffer the mysterious injury. Tom Izzo was hopeful he’d recover in time for the season and he had high hopes for his sophomore guard.

Akins was on a pitch count to start the season, playing no more than 20 minutes in the first two games before getting 27 against Kentucky.

And then he tweaked that injury against Villanova, forcing him to miss the PKI and sit out a couple of weeks along with fellow injured starter Malik Hall. Both had foot injuries.

Luckily for Akins, his x-rays were negative and he came back in early December. But he hadn’t quite looked like the player we expected at the beginning of the year when Izzo predicted a “monster” jump for his sophomore.

That changed recently.

Akins giving Michigan State basketball elite minutes

Outside of playing good defense like he had been all year, he’s finally starting to click on the offensive end for the first time this season.

Before the Brown game, Akins had shot over 40 percent just one time all season and he had scored more than seven points just once. He now has three straight games of over 40 percent shooting from the floor and he’s scored nine, 15, and 13 over the past three games, respectively.

The most impressive improvement has been his 3-point shooting. He was 3-for-15 in his first five games of 2022-23 and he’s now 11-for-15 over the past three games. Seeing the ball go in the hoop has helped his entire game and he looks like that breakout star that we all hoped we’d see.

Akins is red-hot at the perfect time with Big Ten play starting back up next week.