Roundball recap: MSU locks up Big Ten title on Senior Night

Big Ten Champions.

Senior Night success.

27 regular season wins.

Folks, that’s the recipe to a perfect night at the Breslin Center. Let’s just jump right into it...

Senior Night is undefeated when it comes to bringing out the emotions from the players, coaches and fans. Starting with playing the Bahamian national anthem for Tum Tum Nairn before the game to the teary-eyed farewell to Ben Carter, Gavin Schilling and Nairn, it was a perfect night.

What better way to celebrate Senior Night than to capture a Big Ten title? This puts MSU at 14 Big Ten titles, which ties them with Michigan for sixth most in the conference. Oh, MSU has also been in the Big Ten 33 years less than Michigan has been too. Erased that three-plus decade head start.

And, as we all know, MSU has a chance for its first outright Big Ten title since 2009 with a win at Wisconsin this Sunday. They can also clinch an outright championship with Purdue and Ohio State losing one more game, but it’s easier to take matters into your own hands, ya know?

Mike Carter-USA TODAY Sports

This is also the first time MSU has won 27 regular season games in program history. That’s never been done. Ever. That’s cool, gang.

The most exciting storyline (in my opinion) from today’s game was Josh Langford’s shooting. I know one game doesn’t swing everything, but he had a great bounce-back game after a string of rocky shooting performances. He had 16 points on 5-11 shooting and, more importantly, 3-4 from 3-point land.

This seems like a pretty good stat:

You talk about being a second half team, man. In its last eight games, MSU is outscoring opponents 343-254. That’s roughly an average of 43-32. Tom Izzo should be charge six figures for motivational speaking appearances.

Mike Carter-USA TODAY Sports

Speaking of the second half, let’s talk about the Illinois game plan. They came out of the locker room trying to get points inside after a first half that proved getting points in the paint was tougher than scoring on Bigfoot (not an exaggeration, he’s slow laterally). They didn’t attempt a 3-pointer – something they did to a 55 percent clip in the first half – until the 12:36 mark. I’m not sure what the game plan was there, but thanks for that.

And now, some fun tweets: