Wichita State Game Recap (11/30/08)
Posted by kj on Sunday, November 30th, 2008
Michigan State knocks off Wichita State 65-57 in roughly a 63-possession game. Unofficial Official box score (I’m tired of waiting for the official one to get posted).
It’s hard to know exactly how to feel about this result, partly because we don’t know how good (or bad) a team Wichita State is. On the one hand, the Shockers came into the Old Spice Classic as the weakest team in the field on paper. On the other hand, they played Georgetown within a single-digit margin and beat a Siena team most observers thought was going to be pretty tough.
I didn’t see the first half of the game; I listened to the radio broadcast at less than full attentiveness. It appears the main issue for MSU was hitting perimeter shots. MSU’s guards combined to make only 4 of 16 FG attempts in the first half. The 45-minute delay for the “leak delay” probably didn’t help in terms of getting into a rhythm on offense, and MSU trailed 26-22 at the half.
Thanks to Dylan’s tip, I watched the second half of the game via on-line streaming video–but, again, at less than full attentiveness (I confess to being distracted by the less-than-stellar trash talk on the side-by-side chat room of the streaming video website in question). Anyway, MSU overcame some early turnover problems and found more ways to get shots closer to the basket, led by the efforts of Raymar Morgan and Kalin Lucas, to outscore Wichita State 43-31 in the second half.
The scoring attack was a balanced one, with Morgan, Lucas, Marquise Gray, Durrell Summers, and Delvon Roe all scoring between 9 and 12 points. Roe provided a great all-around effort, adding 11 rebounds, 1 block, and 1 steal in 19 minutes of play.
Rebounding was clearly the high point of Michigan State’s performance tonight. The statistics indicated Wichita State was a very good rebounding team, but MSU put up dominant rebounding percentages (excluding team rebounds) of 53.1% 54.3% (offensive) and 75.9% 74.2% (defensive). Shocker forward Ramon Clemente, who came into the game averaging nearly 11 rebounds per game, was held to just 3 boards in 25 minutes in this one.
Considering the circumstances, I’m happy to take this win to close out the tournament. I’m going to classify this one under “finding a way to win ugly when your shots aren’t falling.” Those of you who viewed the game in a more complete and attentive fashion can chime in with your own views on MSU’s performance below. I hope to have a post looking at the positives and negatives of MSU’s performance over the three-game tournament up later tonight or tomorrow.
Next up (do I really need to tell you?): #1-ranked North Carolina in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. Wednesday night at 9:15. Ford Field. ESPN.
Filed in game recap5 responses so far
5 Responses to “Wichita State Game Recap (11/30/08)”
Mark in DCon 01 Dec 2008 at 9:58 am 1Judging by the box score it looks like neither team shot well from the perimeter. Having not watched the game I can’t say whether that’s because we played better perimeter D or because Wichita State can’t shoot from outside. Actually, their overall shooting percentage was atrocious so it looks like we played pretty good D. Our interior scoring looks like it was the difference – Gray, Roe and Morgan all shot at or over 50 percent. OTOH our 3 point shooting was simply awful. Even without Suton we appear to be able to hold our own inside but the perimeter O and D are inconsistent. I guess it’s understandable because we are young on the perimeter but I was expecting more from our sophmores (with the exception of Summers, who has played well offensively) than they are giving us.
witless chumon 01 Dec 2008 at 10:55 am 2Gray played some excellent D. The Shockers have a pretty decent looking 7-foot freshman and he couldn’t back Quise down. He did surprise him in the open court breaking the press and got to the hoop for a three-point play. Gray also almost go T-ed up for bumping the guy who fouled him during his typical Gray celebration after an and-1 play. He hit a 17-or so footer from the corner for his second long jumper of the tournament.
MSU was shooting bad in general in the first half, missing layups and put backs, not just from outside. Durrell Summers has looked like our most consistent outside shooter.
From the confirming MSU fans’ prejudices department:
Ed Hightower was heard telling the kids with towels that if they didn’t keep the floor dry, they wouldn’t get paid.
From the confirming one MSU fan’s prejudices department:
The Magic Kingdom shoddily built? I’m shocked! Shocked! (OT: Everyone should read “Team Rodent” a non-fiction savaging of Disney by the great Carl Hiassen)
huberton 01 Dec 2008 at 11:18 am 3How could the game be so close when MSU outrebounded the Shockers by 50% and shot almost three times as many free throws?
kjon 01 Dec 2008 at 11:25 am 4Simplest answer: Free throw shooting. If we’d made 75% of our free throws, we’d have won the game by 13 points, which I think was roughly the point spread going into the game.
Rewertson 01 Dec 2008 at 4:20 pm 5I was shocked at the free throw shooting down in Orlando. I really hope that gets turned around now that the boys are back in Michigan. Poor free throw shooting is not a characteristic this team will be able to afford against top quality big 10 teams, whether at home or on the road.