" title="Spartans Weblog">Spartans Weblog

A statistical look at Michigan State basketball, with a dash of football talk

Archive for July, 2008

Sneak Preview: Historical field goal shooting tendencies

kj on Jul 30th 2008

The graph below shows the percentage of MSU’s field goal attempts taken from 3-point range for each of the last 12 seasons.  This is a manually-constructed chart, as statsheet.com doesn’t track this particular number.

Bullet point review:

MSU ranked in the bottom ten nationally in 3-point attempts as a percentage of field goal attempts this past season.  [...]

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Coffee Talk: Taking the Clutch Shot

kj on Jul 29th 2008

The match-ups and schedule for the Old Spice Classic have been released.  (Don’t the words “Old Spice” and “Classic” go together nicely?)  Michigan State will play Maryland in the opening round at 7:00 on Thursday, November 27 (Thanksgiving Day).  The game will be televised on ESPN2.
If they won that game, they’d play the winner of [...]

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Izzo planning on a smaller lineup

kj on Jul 27th 2008

Another scheduling note: MSU will not be playing an exhibition game vs. the University of Victoria after all (hat tip: Up with the Colors).  No explanation for the cancellation.  I still haven’t seen any additional information on the preseason Canadian tour.  Not sure if this is a sign it’s not going to happen now or [...]

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What we know about the 2008-09 MSU basketball schedule

kj on Jul 25th 2008

I’d expect Michigan State will announce the full 2008-2009 basketball schedule for the upcoming season within the next several weeks.  Here’s what we know at this point about the major nonconference games, following the release of Kansas’ schedule:
Note: List is updated per this post.  It also appears we’ll be playing Idaho, Bradley, Alcorn State, and [...]

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Thursday Doublelinkburger

kj on Jul 24th 2008

We just missed the top 10 of ESPN.com’s college basketball prestige list, coming in at #11.  IU was #13.  The conference tournament drought and several first-round NCAA losses hurt us:
11. MICHIGAN STATE SPARTANS, Big Ten
Positives: 14 20-win seasons; 4 No. 1 seeds; 18 NCAA berths; 9 Sweet 16s; 4 Final Fours; 2000 national championship; 12 [...]

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Wednesday Links: We’ve-Got-(At-Least)-Top-20-Prestige Edition

kj on Jul 23rd 2008

Drew Naymick is going to play pro ball in Poland.  How do you say “blocked shot” in Polish?
Chris Allen is working hard this summer, knowing he’ll need to be a more consistent scorer next season (video clip).
Mark Hollis must have a really good PR guy.  After the piece in the Lansing State Journal last week, [...]

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Izzo versus Big Ten opponents

kj on Jul 22nd 2008

Well, the unanimous conclusion of this blog’s readers is that Wisconsin is our main rival.  And I can’t argue with that conclusion.  Chalk this week’s Coffee Talk question up as non-debate-inducing.
The one caveat readers offered about Wisconsin being our biggest rival is the one-sidedness of the rivalry in recent years.  Wisconsin has beaten MSU in [...]

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