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

Iowa Game Recap

Posted by kj on Thursday, February 26th, 2009

MSU scoots by Iowa 62-54 in a 59-possession game.  StatSheet box score.

The reflexive thing to say after you’ve beat a vastly inferior team by just 8 points at home is to say the team “lost focus” or “didn’t keep their foot on the pedal.”  I’m going to resist that temptation and say MSU did exactly what it needed to do:

  • Dominated the glass.
  • Won the turnover battle.
  • Forced Iowa to take tough shots late in the shot clock.

The only glitch was that Iowa made a bunch of those tough shots–led by Jake Kelly, who scored 20 points on 13 FG attempts by converting a series of very difficult jumpshots–to keep themselves within single digits.  To me, this outcome is still preferable to winning by a larger margin because your opponent missed a lot of open looks you allowed them to get free for.  Iowa recorded an assist on only 7 of 18 made FG attempts–a sign that their points were the result of good individual plays, rather than defensive breakdowns by MSU.

Your bar graph:

Your bullets:

  • Delvon Roe continues to be more and more of a factor offensively.  16 points on 6-7 FG shooting tonight.  Over the last 7 games, Roe is averaging 8.0 points and 6.1 rebounds in 23.4 minutes per game.  Those are nice numbers for the second low-post player on a Tom Izzo team.
  • 12 points on 4-7 three-point shooting for Korie Lucious.  He needs to shoot more, as he seems just as good (if not better) when he’s not completely set.
  • Quiet game for Kalin Lucas: 4 points, 6 assists, and 3 turnovers.  He only took 6 shots, though, as MSU was generally able to create good looks at the basket early in the shot clock.
  • Raymar Morgan still looks a ways off from being back near his peak playing level: 2-7 FG shooting and 5 personal fouls.  (Somehow I missed him fouling out.)  His jumpshot is out of whack.
  • Travis Walton should not handle the ball late in close games.
  • Nice game for Draymond Green: 4 points and 5 rebounds in 15 minutes.
  • Another game in which Chris Allen turns the ball over too much (3) and shows glimpses of his jumpshot returning (8 points on 2-6 three-point shooting).
  • Goran Suton (9 points on 7-8 FT shooting) has exellent touch on free throws that hit the rim.

The main concern coming out of this game is whether Durrell Summers did anything serious to his ankle.  On the plus side, he came back and played about 4 minutes late in the first half and didn’t look perplexed on the bench.  On the negative side, he didn’t play at all in the second half.  Hopefully, that was just the training/coaching staff being extra cautious.

Onward and forward.

Next up: A road game of the cringe-inducing variety in Champaign on Sunday (4:00, CBS).

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Filed in game recap13 responses so far

13 Responses to “Iowa Game Recap”

  1. Stukaon 26 Feb 2009 at 1:14 am 1

    More than 50% of our points in this game from the freshmen? I like that glimpse into the future…

    Stealing a win in Champaign this weekend would be huge. Go State!

  2. Benon 26 Feb 2009 at 10:48 am 2

    Rexrode on Summers’ ankle: “He said in the locker room that it feels fine and he doesn’t expect to miss any time. Tom Izzo said the upcoming two games in three days helped convince him to play cautious with Summers.”

    http://noise.typepad.com/hey_j.....thing.html

  3. Chrison 26 Feb 2009 at 10:51 am 3

    I don’t know what to make of this team. They are obviously inconsistent, however they don’t have any glaring weaknesses. What happens if we play against a good rebounding team? Are we a good enough shooting team to win if we are not able to rebound our misses? Our defense is spectacular at times but there were breakdowns that resulted in wide open looks last night. Good team will not miss those. This is going to be a gut wrenching March.

  4. kjon 26 Feb 2009 at 11:14 am 4

    I need to look into exactly how “inconsistent” this team is. I think we may have excessive expectations as to what a good college basketball team is going to do on a game-by-game basis.

  5. Chrison 26 Feb 2009 at 11:24 am 5

    kj, Check out the BigTen Geeks today. Ken Pom calculates inconsistency based on the standard deviation of scoring difference game. We rank 293rd. I’d say that is pretty inconsistent.

  6. TMadison25on 26 Feb 2009 at 1:04 pm 6

    Unbeatable Ed Hightower image. A picture is worth a thousand words.

    http://www.storminspank.com/20.....-even.html

  7. zacharyon 26 Feb 2009 at 2:00 pm 7

    whats up with the izzon booing roe after he bricked a free throw. are they aware hes on our team? or were they saying something else that just sounds like a boo?

  8. Seeron 26 Feb 2009 at 2:40 pm 8

    What happened was that some **** gave a “check 1-2-3″ over the PA system while Roe was taking his shot. The Izzone was booing the Breslin’s production team for making distracting noise during the free throw.

  9. zacharyon 26 Feb 2009 at 2:41 pm 9

    i see i see.

  10. Mark in DCon 26 Feb 2009 at 3:27 pm 10

    I’m glad we “won” the turnover battle but our turnover rate in this game was still too high – it was just less ridiculously high than Iowa’s. I guess we shot OK and we definitely had a huge advantage on the boards so the turnovers were the only glaring problem. Iowa outshot us but not by much and our rebounding was enough to negate that difference.

    Although we didn’t run away with the game, we opened up a 10 point lead and never really let Iowa go on any kind of run once we had the lead – I never had the sense that we were going to lose the game. We’ll have to play better this weekend if we want to win in Champaign though.

  11. schilla1on 26 Feb 2009 at 4:34 pm 11

    Hate, absolutely hate to say this, but kind of Go Blue. If scUM beats PU tonight, the Big Ten race takes a decidedly Green turn.

  12. mkon 26 Feb 2009 at 5:09 pm 12

    If UM wins, our home game against Purdue won’t be that exciting (or stressful). A more plausible scenario is that Purdue will come to east lansing with 4 losses, facing msu also with 4 losses (including a likely loss against illinois). I would like to see msu beat Purdue and win the championship at home, and then win the big ten tournament as well.

  13. TMadison25on 26 Feb 2009 at 5:26 pm 13

    Purdue played well at the Breslin last year… without Hummel. I think they matchup well against us and it will be close. Plus, that Illinois game is going to be tough. I’m pulling for the Wolverines tonight.