alum96

April 4th, 2015 at 9:28 PM ^

See higher on the page.  They lost 2 of their big 3 but one is almost a 1 for 1 swap with a big time scorer from West Virginia (Trice for Harris).  The question is at the 4 - Dawson for Davis who is a 5 star big man and Mr. Michigan.

Their centers are not great but will be a SR Costello and JR Schilling.  And their 3 freshman this year who were not asked to do much will be back with experience.  They also bring in  3 other freshmen outside Davis - not sure how much contribution they get but they dont really need much from those guys since Izzo rarely loses anyone early.   They will be a very veteran team (again) and you can see in moderrn basketball if you have decent talent but is very experienced it matches up pretty well with a lot of young teams.

Joined: 04/28/2012

MGoPoints: 82455

SHub'68

April 4th, 2015 at 10:25 PM ^

It's hilarious. MSU plays defense with 'physicality' under the assumption that the refs can't call everything. In other words, basically getting away with fouling the crap out of you. Well, OK, this works in the BIG, and to some degree against some teams even in the tourney. But this is an incredibly DUMB game plan against a team like Duke! There is NO WAY the officials will let you do that with coach K on the sideline. It sets you up perfectly for huge failures like today. 27 - 37 from the line! There is no way you can get your players to stop hand-checks, arm bars, pushing, shoving, grabbing, and basically just hacking away if that is what you have taught them to do all season. And if they do stop, it isn't like they can just replace it with REAL defense. So you get tentativeness that just lets a good team like Duke smoke you. I can't recall the exact quote in his press conference, but it was something about it 'not being fun to coach a game that is officiated like this.' Well how fun do you suppose it is to coach against YOUR team that gets away with making everything a rugby scrum? Justice. I am laughing so hard right now!

Joined: 09/29/2010

MGoPoints: 6663