Michigan State basketball: Report card for tight win over Iowa

Michigan State basketball picked up another solid conference win on Thursday night over Iowa, improving to 6-4 in Big Ten play and 14-7 overall thanks to a Malik Hall return.

That makes you wonder just how good the record would be if Hall never got injured this season. The Spartans were leading Illinois on the road before he went down and didn’t return and they lost to Purdue, Northwestern, and Indiana without him. This team is a freak Hall injury away from being somewhere in the range of 17-4 and tied for first in the Big Ten.

But let’s not think about that.

Let’s hand out some grades from Thursday night’s big win.

Mady Sissoko: A-

This was probably Mady Sissoko’s best game since the first couple weeks of the season and you have to give it up to him, especially after he was taken out in the first couple of minutes following a really bad foul which led to an and-one.

Sissoko picked up his first career double-double, scoring 10 points with 10 rebounds and he shot 4-for-6 from the floor. He was solid on the defensive end, but not great, as he did a decent job against Filip Rebraca. He still got his points, but Jaxon Kohler also did struggle to guard him.

We saw him eat on the boards and he even had a couple of massive offensive boards and put-backs. It was good to see Sissoko look like his early-season self again.