3 Michigan State basketball takeaways from win over Madrid All-Stars

The first Michigan State basketball game of the season is in the books, and the Spartans took down the Madrid All-Stars in a hard-fought 94-87 victory.

As with any preseason game, especially the first one of the season, there are going to be a lot of speed bumps that make you pause about the team. But even though Michigan State showed they have a lot of areas to improve on, they also had many bright spots as well.

I could probably write a post with 10 takeaways from this game, but let's just stick with the three that stood out to me the most.

1. Xavier Booker showed signs of becoming a superstar

The one player that Michigan State needed to improve the most this offseason was Xavier Booker. It's no secret that he brings a skillset that nobody else on the team possesses. He has the size to score down low, the ability to defend and block shots in the post and stretch opposing defenses to the perimeter.

But we unfortunately never saw much of that last season.

Now I won't sit here and tell you that Booker is a superstar already, but he did show glimpses of that throughout this game, especially in the first half. Booker finished the game with a team-high 21 points, but in the first half alone he had a whopping 19 points off 7-for-8 shooting. This included a blistering 4-for-5 from 3-point range as well.

Like I said though, Booker still isn't the complete player that Michigan State needs him to be. He still has a lot of work to do on the defensive end before he can be considered a superstar, but it's more than obvious that the skillset is already there for Booker on the offensive end.

So if he can continue to dominate on offense I think we'll all be able to ignore those occasional lapses on defense for now.