Michigan State Basketball: 3 takeaways from Spartans win over Notre Dame

Michigan State Basketball made Notre Dame their second victim and improved their record to 2-0.

Notre Dame’s first game of the 2020-21 season against Michigan State Basketball went just as good or bad as could be expected. It must be made clear, any game that has taken place in the first week of this NCAA Basketball season means very little.

With limited practices and no exhibition games aside from team scrimmages, coaches are more concerned with getting ready and playing well rather than actually winning.

A win means nothing if you do not get better, for, a win in November will not have you cutting down the nets in March and Saturday’s game was an example of just that. Joey Hauser opened up the contest with two consecutive baskets from passes from Foster Loyer. At 16:50 Cormac Ryan connected on three of his thirteen to give Notre Dame one of three leads at 8-7.

At just under 10 minutes, a Josh Langford (8 points) three-pointer put Michigan State up 20-18. With 5:53 left in the half, Josh Langford made a jumper that would begin a 17-0 run to end the half.

Michigan State began the second half on an 11-2 run to stretch the lead to twenty-two points. A three-pointer by Rocket Watts (13 points)  at 12:57 lifted the Spartans to their largest lead of 28.

From that point on it was experiment time for Coach Izzo, as mix-matching of line-ups led to the Spartans scoring just three points in the final 4:19 of the game to come away with an 80-70 victory and a lot of questions answered prior to their clash with Duke on Tuesday.