3 things Michigan State basketball must improve on in Spain

3. Better big rotations

Surprisingly one of the positive things I saw on Thursday was some pretty good play from Michigan State’s bigs. Both Carson Cooper and Jaxon Kohler scored double figures which hardly ever happened last season.

But the thing that left a lot to be desired was some of Tom Izzo’s rotation decisions with that group.

The first was transfer Szymon Zapala drawing the start. It became pretty obvious early on that Zapala did not belong in the starting lineup, and that continued all game as he failed to score a single point.

On the flip side, even with Cooper and Kohler playing well I still didn’t love how Izzo handled them. We once again saw Izzo go with a two big lineup that featured both Cooper and Kohler, and whenever he does that it seems to go horribly. Both players showed they can be effective in the game on their own, so if playing them together doesn’t work why keep doing it?

Especially if Zapala’s going to continue to be ineffective it’s important to play Cooper and Kohler separately that way neither player gets too tired which would force Szymon to play more minutes than he maybe should.