3 Michigan State basketball takeaways from night 5 of Moneyball

2. Carson Cooper woes

Someone who needed to have a huge summer was Carson Cooper.

There’s no denying that the center position has been atrocious for Michigan State in recent years, so MSU needed their returning centers to take a massive step forward this offseason.

Unfortunately it appears Cooper is still struggling on offense as he only scored four points on Tuesday. To be fair to Cooper, Moneyball games sometimes turn into guard heavy games where they don’t give the bigs many looks. But four points is four points, and that isn’t good enough.

The Michigan State players are supposed to be the best at Moneyball, that’s why you see MSU’s role players explode for 30-plus points at times during Moneyball. So the fact that Cooper couldn’t assert his dominance and score more than four points has me very concerned.

One thing we don’t need to worry about is Cooper’s defense as he’s one of the best defenders in the Big Ten. But Michigan State needs Cooper to become a complete player, and it sadly looks like there’s still a lot of work needed to be done to get there.