Beating Dan Hurley and UConn isn’t for everyone. Heck, he’s only lost 27 games over the past four years which is pretty unheard of nowadays, and he has two national titles in that span. Tom Izzo and Michigan State will be tasked with bringing down the No. 2 seed in the loaded East Region.
This isn’t going to be easy considering these two teams faced each other in exhibition play and UConn looked like the clearly better team.
A lot has changed since then.
Michigan State has improved drastically since that preseason meetup in Connecticut, going 25-7 in the regular season and finishing in third place in the best conference in America. The Spartans also beat teams like Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Illinois, and Purdue this season and hung with both Michigan and Duke — the Spartans had leads late in the second half of all three games.
UConn presents a tough matchup for Michigan State, but the biggest key to victory is actually already in Izzo’s repertoire: transition buckets.
It may seem like a pretty obvious key, but it’s even more important against a team like UConn that holds teams to under 40 percent from the floor in the half court. In fact, the Huskies’ defense is in the 95th percentile in terms of half-court field goal percentage at 37.8% (per CBBanalytics.com). Not many teams are defending that well in the half court.
On the flip side, Michigan State is in the 100th percentile in terms of transition field goal percentage at an astounding 68.9%. When Michigan State gets out and runs, there’s a good chance it’s scoring.
What do those numbers mean for Michigan State vs UConn?
UConn is going to want to slow things down and force Michigan State to play more half-court offense than it would like. The Spartans are going to want to get out and run, but UConn has to control the pace and get Michigan State to slow it down.
How do they do that? By getting back quickly after shots. This might mean sacrificing some rebounds, but if UConn wants to control the pace, they’ll have to send at least four guys back immediately. Maybe leave Tarris Reed to try and grab a board, but have everyone else ready to sprint back to stop the fast break.
That might not even work, though. Even if UConn tries to get back quickly, Michigan State has the stamina to wear the Huskies down. They’re not going to be able to sustain that gameplan for 40 minutes. At some point, the Huskies are going to be giving up too much in regards to potential second-chance opportunities.
If Izzo wants to beat his good friend Dan Hurley and advance to the Elite Eight for a second straight year, he just needs to trust his team to do what it’s been doing: rebounding and running.
Transition points will be the difference.