4 Michigan State basketball takeaways from Moneyball's night 4

2. Jesse McCulloch shines in Frankie Fidler’s absence

Jesse McCulloch has been pretty quiet so far during Moneyball, but that changed in a hurry on Thursday. McCulloch’s Michigan State teammate on his Moneyball team is Frankie Fidler, who wasn’t able to play on Thursday night. So that left McCulloch alone on his roster, the first Spartan to not have a teammate to play with this season.

But that didn’t impact McCulloch, in fact he actually took advantage of the extra touches he received. McCulloch went for 35 points on Thursday, whereas in the previous three games he only scored five, 16, and 15 points.

Maybe this had to do with Fidler being gone or maybe it’s just McCulloch becoming more comfortable and confident overtime, but regardless what we saw from McCulloch on Thursday night was extremely encouraging.

McCulloch likely won’t play very much this season for Michigan State, but his number will be called occasionally. So if he can give Michigan State a solid 3-7 minutes per game then I’d count that a success.