EAST LANSING – On paper, the next two games look easily winnable for Michigan State basketball.
But this is the Big Ten. Nothing ever is as simple as it seems against conference competition.
“I think ‘trap games’ for these are kind of a vague term in the Big Ten,” senior center Carson Cooper said after practice Thursday, Jan. 22. “In the Big Ten, everybody’s good and anybody can beat you on any given night.”
The 10th-ranked Spartans (17-2, 7-1 Big Ten) host Maryland at noon Saturday at Breslin Center (noon/CBS), a brief stopover after a nearly week-long West Coast trip before they head to Rutgers to close the first half of conference play Tuesday.
“We just came off the road trip, you worry about that a little bit,” MSU coach Tom Izzo said after Thursday’s practice. “Last year, if you remember, we came back and were sleepwalking through the first half of the Oregon game. So we’re trying to learn from our mistakes and prepare for it accordingly.”
The Spartans are on a five-game win streak after victories at Washington last Saturday and at Oregon on Tuesday. A year ago, MSU dropped both of its West Coast games at USC and UCLA, struggled against the Ducks at home and then lost the next one against Indiana at Breslin. Those would be the Spartans’ only Big Ten losses in a 17-3 championship season.
“Overall, it was good. We came out 2-0 instead of last year, we lost both of them,” junior forward Coen Carr said Thursday. “It’s always good to come out with two wins.”
The Terrapins (8-11, 1-7) and first-year coach Buzz Williams arrive having won just one Big Ten game at home against Penn State, which remains winless in conference play. That continues a favorable first-half schedule for the Spartans.
After Saturday’s game, Izzo’s team heads to Piscataway, New Jersey, for the first time since 2022 – the last two road games between the Spartans and Scarlet Knights were at Madison Square Garden in New York. MSU lost its last two at the Rutgers Athletic Center and hasn’t won there since Nov. 30, 2018. However, coach Steve Pikiell’s team this season is struggling and entered the weekend 2-6 in Big Ten games and 8-9 overall.
“People are hungry to win. … (Maryland) will be ready to play. We gotta be ready to play,” Izzo said. “It’s a big weekend for us, it’s (a basketball) alumni weekend, it’s getting home for the first time in a while. It’s an exciting time for us.
“We gotta make sure we’re more excited than they are. And we have to make sure we’re more hungry than they are. That’ll take discipline.”
MSU is one victory away from equaling last season’s 18-2 start en route to a Big Ten title by three games. However, the first 10 opponents in conference play this year have drastically favored the Spartans in their strong start.
The only loss MSU has so far in league play came on the road by two points at No. 7 Nebraska, which is atop the league at 8-0 overall and one of college basketball’s last remaining unbeatens at 19-0 entering Friday. The Spartans’ other nine first-half opponents (including Maryland and Rutgers) are currently a combined 17-55 in Big Ten games, with Iowa at 4-4 the only team with a .500 conference record.
“They know where they are right now,” Izzo said of his players. “We have some goals we’d like to obtain. And winning Saturday would put us one step closer to a couple of them.”
One of those is trying to repeat as Big Ten champs. To do so, the Spartans’ final 10 games will be against far superior competition than their first 10.
A visit from No. 2 Michigan on Jan. 30 starts that slate and a trip to Ann Arbor closes the regular season, with MSU’s nine second-half opponents currently a combined 45-27 as of Friday. Only three of them have losing league records, with two of those games on the road at Minnesota on Feb. 4 and Indiana on March 1 and Rutgers making a return visit to East Lansing on March 5.
But first, the Spartans have to close out the first half by taking care of business like they have up to this point.
“These are two games that we have a good chance to go in and feel really good going into Michigan,” Cooper said. “And if we play how we’re supposed to play, I think we’re gonna be in a good start.”
Terrapins update
Maryland has lost five of its last six games and eight of its past 10 since starting Big Ten play with a road loss at Iowa. All seven of the Terps’ league losses have been by double digits.
David Coit, who began his career at Northern Illinois and played last season at Kansas, averages 15.4 points a game with 2.9 assists for Maryland. The 5-foot-11 guard is a dynamic scorer who has some of the biggest games of the season with 43 points in the win over PSU, 41 against Mount St. Mary’s, 31 against the Wolverines and 30 against USC.
“Kobe Bryant did that, and that’s about the only guy I know that did that,” Izzo said of Coit. “He’s really good.”
Darius Adams, a 6-5 swingman, posts 12.3 points, while 6-7 forward and Texas A&M transfer Solomon Washington leads the Terps at 9.5 rebounds to go with 9.8 points a game. Pharrel Payne, a 6-9 forward who averaged 17.5 points and 7.2 rebounds in Maryland’s first 10 games, has been out with a knee injury since a loss to U-M on Dec. 13.
Prediction
The Spartans start strong, something that has eluded them at times, with Cooper and Jaxon Kohler establishing themselves on the low block. Their rebounding against the smaller Terps allows Jeremy Fears Jr. and the transition game to seize control and build a comfortable cushion deep into the game. The pick: MSU 82, Maryland 66.
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State’s schedule has been favorable. They have to keep winning
Reporting by Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
