Michigan State Spartans Basketball: MSU 82, Florida Atlantic 55 Kneejerk Reactions

The Four Factors

Thoughts

Free Throw shooting was one of my only concerns from the game; 60.7% is probably not an acceptable number. MSU was 338th out of 351 Division 1 teams in this category last year and I still expect regression to the mean.

Deyonta Davis was an absolute monster with a 13-11-5 points-rebounds-blocks line. Interestingly, he used 33% of available possessions with a 112 offensive rating. I'm guessing that's mainly due to offensive rebounds and putbacks, but that's still a nice outing in the first regular season game from a true frosh.

Denzel Valentine had a "quiet" 13-8-9 (pts-reb-ast) and was quite close to the triple double. Ho-hum.

Matt Costello led the scoring with 15, and early on the strategy appeared to be to get the ball to Costello in the post against Florida Atlantic's (not particularly) bigs. This worked out pretty well; Costello had a 128 ORtg on 27% usage.

Eron Harris continues what I presume is just a shooting slump by going 0-4 behind the three-point line.

Matt McQuaid was super efficient without using many possessions; three assists to no turnovers is great alongside two blocks. Appears to be a valuable rotation piece.

The defense in general was quite good with only 0.79 points per possession allowed. We'll learn a lot more against Kansas.

Bottom Line

This MSU team took care of business in the season opener against an overmatched opponent. The final spread was larger than anticipated, but much of the game was garbage time after MSU sprinted to a 20-4 lead less than 8 minutes into the game. We didn't end up learning much other than the fact that the Davis and McQuaid will be real players this year, and that Eron Harris isn't setting the world on fire just yet. We'll learn much more on Tuesday in the Champions Classic against Kansas.