Michigan State’s Aaron Henry named consensus All-Big Ten third-team, Big Ten All-Defensive team

It wasn’t always pretty for the 2020-2021 Michigan State Spartans basketball team, but MSU has been putting it together in the past couple of weeks, and a big reason why is junior guard/forward Aaron Henry.

Henry put together a strong campaign, with 15.5 points, 5.5 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 1.3 blocks, and 1.3 steals per game on the season, while shooting 44.8 percent from the floor. He has been rewarded for those efforts by being recognized as an All-Big Ten third-team selection by both both the media and coaches. Henry was selected to the Big Ten All-Defensive team as well.

Henry has almost single-handily willed the Spartans to wins throughout the season, including helping MSU win three games over top-five opponents in about a two-week stretch. Henry was also named Big Ten Player of the Week on March 8 for the previous week of competition, in which he averaged 18 points, six rebounds and three assists per game in that three-game stretch.

Certainly, an argument could be made that Henry belongs on the second-team, but given the ups and downs of Michigan State this season, it makes sense that voters — who maybe didn’t pay a lot of attention to the Spartans’ resurgence toward the end of the season — would place him on the third-team, and that is still a great honor.

Joining Henry on the All Big Ten-third team voted by the coaches is Marcus Carr (Minnesota), Duane Washington Jr. (Ohio State), Ron Harper Jr. (Rutgers), and D’Mitrik Trice (Wisconsin). The media also voted Henry, Washington, Trice, and Harper Jr. as third-team, but swapped Carr with Michigan’s Franz Wagner, naming Carr to the second-team.

Joining Henry on the All-Defensive team was Trent Frazier (Illinois), Darryl Morsell (Maryland — Morsell also took home the conference’s Defensive Player of the Year Award), Jamari Wheeler (Penn State) and Myles Johnson (Rutgers).

Graduate senior guard Joshua Langford was also named as Michigan State’s Big Ten Sportsmanship Award honoree.

The All-Big Ten first-team can be found in the tweet below:

Here is the All-Big Ten second-team:

Luka Garza was named as the Big Ten Player of the Year for the second consecutive season. For the full list of conference awards and honors, visit BigTen.org