EAST LANSING- Michigan State Spartans defeated the Yale Bulldogs 100-44 in their second regular season game on Friday night.
This is the third matchup this season where MSU has scored at least 100 points against their opponent.
A dominant fourth quarter performance put the Spartans way out in front, as they look to carry this momentum into the rest of their season.
Here are some of the key takeaways from Friday night’s game.
Trap Defense
The Spartans put their trap defense on full display against the Bulldogs, forcing them to 31 total turnovers.
The Spartan trap defense was locked down, forcing multiple 10 second violations, and preventing Yale from getting the ball down court.
MSU did not let up on the defensive end and continued to pressure this Bulldog offense.
“Well, you have to play hard, and everybody has to do it,” Fralick said. “It starts there, and we’ve got some principles of how to trap, when to trap, and how to scramble out of it,”
“There’s still times when we’ll miss things, or we’ll peel put late, but it’s something we work on, we work on a number of different presses, but it’s one thing we tell our team, be aggressive, and I think we did that well tonight,” Fralick said.
Controlling Turnovers
The Spartan offense seemed to be running smoothly up until late in the third quarter, when there were multiple missed passes and miscommunications from the offense.
MSU had 12 total turnovers against Yale and looks to fix their mistakes.
“We sometimes get in this habit of trying to make a home run play, instead of just making a good play,” Fralick said.
“The third quarter we did a bunch of that, we had some crazy fouls, we were bailing people out, we were taking shots before we even moved the defense, so I think it’s remembering regardless of the score you gotta play good basketball,” Fralick said.
“So, it will be good film for us to watch, you know a lot of that stuff is things in a game with a smaller margin, you gotta make sure that’s on point,” Fralick said.
Bench Stepping Up
The Spartan bench played a fantastic fourth quarter, especially redshirt freshman guard, Kennedy Blair, who had 12 points and seven rebounds.
“She missed all of last year with a season ending injury, so she’s a freshman this year it is her first year of college basketball,” Fralick said.
“My favorite thing about Kennedy, you know, she’s a hooper,” Fralick said. “She has the ability to make plays for herself and she has the ability to make plays for others and she did that at a really high-level tonight, Fralick said.
Depth on the bench is one of the most important aspects of a strong basketball team, and when the bench steps up, the rest of the team feels motivated.
“That fourth quarter crew, we knew we had just ten minutes to play so why not just give it all we had,” said redshirt freshman center Mary Meng. “It’s been fun over the last couple games having the opportunity to play with those teammates and I think we’ve just continued to improve, and it’s been really fun.”
The Spartans look to take on Eastern Michigan at the Breslin Center on Monday at 6:30 p.m.
