The Green of Michigan State basketball took over Crisler Center in an unfamiliar way
It felt like the old days at Crisler Center on Saturday night. Not the old days Michigan basketball fans care to remember.
But like the days when Michigan State basketball would come to town and essentially play a home game. When chants of “Go Green, Go White” took over The House That Cazzie Russell Built. When green and white filled more than half the seats. Maybe Saturday night's 73-63 win for MSU didn't quite feature that sort of awkward ratio, like the games did so often before John Beilein arrived.
But it was close. In spirit anyway.
“Did it feel like a road game?” Malik Hall was asked.
“Not really, to be honest,” he said after the Spartans snapped a four-game Ann Arbor losing streak. “They may not like that ...”
'HORROR FILM': Michigan basketball laments turnovers in 73-63 loss to MSU in Ann Arbor
Yet it was true, it wasn’t a road game, and that’s as strong an indictment as you’ll find these days of how far Juwan Howard’s program has fallen. U-M thought it had moved beyond the NCAA tournament wilderness it found itself in for the decade before Beilein got to town.
Short of a miracle run at next month's Big Ten tournament in Minneapolis, the Wolverines will almost certainly miss their second straight NCAA tourney. And for a program with such deep resources and rich history, that’s hard to accept.
What’s harder is that Saturday's loss didn't even come to a vintage Tom Izzo team, though they are finding their footing through a softer part of the schedule. And U-M played well for 30 minutes. Better than MSU, in fact, and even Izzo agreed.
That has been the story of the Wolverines’ season, though: Show promise and capable basketball for a half — or for stretches of a half — and then collapse, often under the weight of turnovers and poor defense.
They play like strangers in too many instances, which is understandable with so many new faces, and with a point guard who can hit the court at home but not on the road.
Dug McDaniel is the Wolverines’ most gifted player, and he has developed within Howard's program — one of the few players to have done so. When he’s flitting and jetting about the court and stepping back into 3s, U-M looks like a team.
But then he’s inconsistent, too, as you’d imagine a part-time player might be. He scored 10 points in the first half and gave MSU’s guards trouble. U-M trailed by just two at the break, and took a five-point lead 3 minutes into the second half.
McDaniel lost his rhythm, though, and eventually lost his way. Jaden Akins had something to do with McDaniel’s three-point second half. So, too, did the inconsistent connection McDaniel has with his teammates on the court.
As Izzo noted after the game, “it’s not an easy situation they’ve been in.”
From Howard’s health issues early, which forced him to miss games, to McDaniel’s intermittent appearances — academic issues have had him sitting out road games — to even the absence of Terrance Williams II on Saturday night. (He was a surprise "out" appearance on the pregame availability report, with no reason given.)
Williams isn’t a star, but he’s reliably productive; his shooting would’ve helped. Howard, for what it’s worth, wouldn't bemoan his circumstances, or his team’s, and although he vented last week about buy-in and threatened to play walk-ons, he insists his system — his very basketball core — works.
His résumé backs him up, at least as far as a regular-season Big Ten title and a couple of Sweet 16s can, even if the most recent was back in 2022.
What he hasn’t done is make a run with a team he built himself, and whether he can in this era ruled by NIL money and the transfer portal remains to be seen. He chafed when asked if he thought about stepping down this offseason, though it would certainly be understandable if he did.
Heart-related surgeries lead to re-evaluations in life all the time, and no one would begrudge him if he wanted a reset.
"If you get to know me a little bit better and know my story, everywhere I've been, I've always faced the noise and I've rolled up my sleeves and found solutions,” he said Saturday night.
Whether he gets the chance to, then, is up to U-M athletic director Warde Manuel, who seems to have Howard’s back for now. The Fab Five standout has watched his star slowly grow less, well, Fab since he took over for Beilein in 2019.
Saturday night had to be the low point. Not the 18th loss overall nor the 12th Big Ten loss this season, both the most for the program since 2007-08 — Beilein's first season. Not even that it lost to its rival. But that the Crisler Center turned green once again.
Izzo, meanwhile, is searching a bit himself. Mostly for consistency, and consistent minutes from a center.
He sounded relieved more than thrilled after MSU won despite shooting 2-for-14 from beyond the arc. Those numbers are flashbacks to the start of this season, back when even he didn’t know if his team would ever hit a jump shot.
Yet the Spartans don’t win this game in December. They don’t miss all those 3s and survive. They don’t come up with 15 steals, get out and run and score almost 40 points in a half on 2s and free throws.
MSU may not be consistent in a way that makes Izzo smile just yet, but they’ve become more resourceful by the week, and to win a “road” game against a rival, in a place they hadn’t won in half a decade, is at least a sign that this team may have something to them next month.
No need to remind everybody what that month is, especially not the Spartans' senior forward who sure as heck looks like he’s taking Izzo’s famed senior leap. Hall admitted he’d put too much pressure on himself when the season began, and the pressure led to pressing.
“In the beginning (of the season), I tried to focus on, like, ‘This is my last year,’” he said. “I put a lot of pressure on myself. When we got to Christmas, I took a step back and said, 'If it’s going to happen, it’ll happen; if it’s not, it’s not.' ”
He was going into every game trying to be the man. Now he’s not. And yet he has become the man, the late-year senior who always had talent but was eternally befallen by injury or just plain bad luck. Izzo has had a few of these players — Travis Trice comes to mind — who find their basketball karma just in time.
Can Hall be the latest to propel another March run?
“He’s become a complete player,” Izzo said.
It’s not just the all-court ability of his game that’s charting. It’s when and where he is making plays. Plays that are “timely,” said fellow senior A.J. Hoggard, who smiled when Hall’s name came up.
Hall worked on the block for most of Saturday night. That's a place he wasn’t always thrilled to be but is now. And when his team needed a score against its rival, he set up shop there and went to work.
There are others spots the Spartans need to clean up, including, at some point, needing Tyson Walker and Akins to make shots on the same night. Yet those are issues for another night. Izzo, for one, wanted to celebrate at least the bus ride back to East Lansing.
Once there, he almost certainly opened his laptop to begin studying, to keep looking for ways to suss out the team he thinks resides within this roster. Saturday night may not have been pretty, but at least it was green.
A sickening sight in Ann Arbor. A welcome one in East Lansing.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Juwan Howard, Tom Izzo searching for directions to different places
