Michigan State turns tables on Bulldogs in first round of the NCAA Tournament, 69-51

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Having had a promising showing in last week’s SEC Tournament, Mississippi State looked like a team that could be dangerous as the NCAA Tournament run began.

Instead, a Michigan State program that spends every season playing in March changed those fortunes. The Tom Izzo-led Spartans dictated the gameplan from start to finish and never really let the Bulldogs stay in the game as the season ended for the Bulldogs, 69-51.

It couldn’t have gone much worse for the Bulldogs from a shooting perspective as Michigan State shot 50% from the floor and made 43% from three with 10-of-23 makes. On the flip side, the Bulldogs made just 37% from the field and 6-of-27 from three.

The defensive game plan from the Spartans coupled with the Bulldogs’ inability to get stops when they needed them was an issue from the start.

“You can talk to you’re blue in the face about that, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to give credit to Michigan State,” Chris Jans said. “They didn’t do anything different than we anticipated or that we prepared for, they just did what they do at a high level.”

Spartan gameplan works to perfection in Bulldog defeat

The first half gave fans a picture of how the game would go. The Bulldogs were kept off the boards and the post players weren’t a factor as the team fell behind by 12 points at 20-8. As badly as the Bulldogs had played in the first half, it was 31-24 at the break as freshman Josh Hubbard started to get going and scored 13 points to close the lead to 31-24 at the break.

Starting slow in the first half and putting together better second halves has been a calling card for this Bulldog team, but it never came in the second half. The Bulldogs couldn’t get it closer than six points in the second half as they struggled to get stops when they scored and struggled to score when they got stops.

The Bulldogs (21-14) finished the game 1-of-15 from the field and didn’t score in the final 4 minutes. Hubbard was held to just two points in the second half and scored 15 points in the game on 6-of-18 shooting and 3-of-11 from three.

“They were heavy in the gaps, strong hands, scraping at the ball. We didn’t really do that good of a job ourselves of moving the ball and moving off the ball as well,” Hubbard said. “We could have done better. Great credit to them for how they played defense.”  

In Tolu Smith’s final game with the Bulldogs, he continued his struggles. Smith scored just two points in the first half and had just nine points and two rebounds in 27 minutes. No one else outside of Hubbard scored in double figures.

There was also a killer moment in the game early for the Bulldogs as the team’s best perimeter defender in senior DJ Jeffries appeared to suffer an injury that would keep him hobbled in the first half. He played a couple of minutes in the second half and then sat the rest of the ball game scoring eight points in 16 minutes of his final game with the maroon and white.

The season ends with the Bulldogs falling short in the NCAA Tournament for a second-straight year and the program hasn’t won a game in the Big Dance since 2008. Jans doesn’t plan on resting in his quest to build the program back to expecting success in postseason play.

It’s the end of the road for some important pieces from the last few years like Smith, Jeffries and DaShawn Davis with Shakeel Moore and Cameron Matthews still having a decision to make. Things are moving in the right direction, but Jans wants to continue to build.

“We went from an 11 seed to an 8 seed. This group of men that have been here, they’re going to be remembered,” Jans said. “They’ve done a lot of things in the last two years that this program hasn’t for quite some time with the quality of wins and the tournament appearances and certainly we’re crossed that we’re not advancing.”