East Lansing \u2014 Michigan State is about to find out what kind of basketball team it has, and not because it knocked off Arkansas on Saturday.<\/p>\n
On the other side of a 69-66 win over Arkansas \u2014 one that rocked Breslin Center, drew 1.67 million Fox viewers and gave an early nod of confidence in this season\u2019s Spartans \u2014 there\u2019s another big-time matchup with No. 9 Kentucky on the horizon Tuesday in New York City at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n
Except between those two big matchups, there\u2019s Thursday\u2019s home game against San Jose State, a Mountain West school that finished 15-20 last season and is 0-2 to start this season. It\u2019s a trap game, even if it comes just three games into the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou win a game, I mean there\u2019s banners hanging over there,\u201d coach Tom Izzo said Tuesday night after practice, standing on a practice court decorated with decades of accomplishments. \u201cWe haven\u2019t done anything. \u2026 So is it a trap game? Well, of course. You got Arkansas on one side and Kentucky on the other. That\u2019s a trap game no matter what (team you\u2019re playing).\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe that\u2019s a good thing. Because as much as the win over Arkansas and whatever comes of the Champions Classic can show the Spartans\u2019 ceiling, how a team with six new contributors responds to a relatively mundane task will also show some of its maturity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we had to see how they would do when the lights go on in a big game, and I saw that,\u201d Izzo said. \u201cNow, are we immature enough \u2014 is the culture of this program disintegrated where we\u2019ll take the next game (easy)? Even though it\u2019s not against a ranked team, and that\u2019s where your seniors and juniors got to be good.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, how Michigan State (2-0) responds to a weaker opponent can show Izzo habits and tendencies that aren\u2019t as clear in the prime-time, ranked matchups that usually evoke a player\u2019s best form. An integrity check, in a way.<\/p>\n
Like always, there\u2019s a reason Izzo scheduled this game in the first place. San Jose State has a strong point guard in Colby Garland, who is averaging 25.5 points (tied for seventh in the country) and four assists in his first two games. Jermaine Washington, another guard, is also a big part of the scout. The Spartans \u2014 the West Coast variety \u2014 are coached by Tim Miles, who helmed Nebraska from 2012-19.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have good guard play,\u201d Izzo said. \u201cTim, I thought, was a really good coach at Nebraska. I thought he got a bad deal there, to be honest with you. So I know he can coach, and I know he knows our program really well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Izzo pointed to his leadership to avoid the ever-feared trap game of a mid-major opponent stacked between two big games. It\u2019s on the veterans \u2014 Jeremy Fears Jr., Coen Carr, Carson Cooper and Jaxon Kohler \u2014 to send the right message to newcomers. They understand the role.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose games, they catch people off guard when you don\u2019t address the elephant in the room, you don\u2019t make sure that everybody realizes what\u2019s at stake here,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re taking it just as serious as we did Arkansas, and as serious as we will Kentucky.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added Carr: \u201cThey got a lot of great guys over there that can play, that can hoop. They kind of run a little smaller lineup, so it\u2019s gonna be tough for some guys having to guard smaller people. \u2026 It\u2019s another game that we can learn from and kind of get us ready for the games to come when we play a different style of team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fears responds well to marathon<\/p>\n
For almost 35 minutes of Saturday\u2019s win over Arkansas, Fears manned the point in a variety of guard combinations. With freshmen and transfers, he was the foundation tying it all together. And Izzo, he admits, ran him into the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t do a very good job of playing Jeremy to death,\u201d Izzo said. \u201cI think he got tired at the end, so we\u2019re gonna work on that, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tuesday after practice, Fears insists he\u2019s not tired at all. It\u2019s nothing the Spartans\u2019 starting point guard can\u2019t handle, even if it is a career high.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m willing to do whatever I can or need to do to win,\u201d Fears said. \u201cWhether it\u2019s 40 minutes, I\u2019m willing to play that every possession, every game to get the win. Or whether it\u2019s involving me playing defense 40 minutes, passing 40 or rebounding 40.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fears missed all seven shots he took, including two from 3-point range. He dished a team-high nine assists, though he had three turnovers.<\/p>\n
He hit four free throws, including a pair late to keep the game in hand. After the game, even after all the misses, he received plenty of praise from two Hall of Fame coaches.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what a player should be doing,\u201d Arkansas coach John Calipari said. \u201cI didn\u2019t make any shots, but I rebounded. I dove on the floor. I came up with balls. I created shots. And I missed every shot, but we won. I am happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s getting better, you know,\u201d Izzo said Saturday. \u201cI mean, really, it\u2019s only his second year when you think of everything he went through.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I was pleased with Jeremy. I was pleased with him. How he responded late. He threw some great lobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Izzo acknowledged earlier in the season that if Fears has to play in the 35-minute range, there\u2019s a problem with this Michigan State team.<\/p>\n
Fears probably won\u2019t stick at that workload all the time, but in the big games the Spartans know who their lead dog is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"East Lansing \u2014 Michigan State is about to find out what kind of basketball team it has, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[32820,88,90,89],"class_list":["post-51187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-michigan-state-spartans-men","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}