WEST LAFAYETTE, IN.— No. 13 Michigan State women’s basketball ended the month of January with a road test in West Lafayette against Purdue. The Spartans gave Coach Fralick an 86-65 win on her birthday and notched their 19th win of the season against the Boilermakers.
After a week off since their last game, head coach Robyn Fralick’s squad used the time off to reset and put a strong focus on where they can improve.
“We had time to look at ourselves,” Fralick said. “There’s some things offensively and defensively, some little things that we felt like we could clean up, things we had been doing, but had gotten a little bit away from. So, we were able to reemphasize that.”
Here are three quick takeaways from the dominant Spartan performance.
Blair’s brilliance
Redshirt sophomore guard Kennedy Blair has been a consistent spark all season for the Green and White and continued the momentum she gained from her 21-point performance against USC last week.
Blair put her stamp on the Purdue game, with 15 points. She added to the impressive scoring outing with eight boards, seven assists, and tied her career-high with five steals.
Fralick praised Blair and described how she can affect any game in a variety of ways.
“Kennedy (Blair) does such a good job of putting relentless pressure on the other team,” Fralick said. “She’s really aggressive in transition, she gets to the paint, she’s a really good finisher in the paint, so I thought in transition she just made a lot happen.”
If Sparty wants to make a deep run in March this year, Blair will play a large part in how it plays out.
Smooth in transition
MSU’s complimentary style of basketball has been a big reason for its success against conference opponents this year. The Spartans have caused havoc for opposing teams’ offenses, and that’s led to easy transition buckets.
Against the Boilers, the Green and White got on the fast break early and often. In the first quarter alone, Purdue gave the ball away eight times. Fralick’s squad finished the night with 19 points off 16 Boilermakers turnovers in the open floor.
Fralick mentioned how she prepared her team to stay in game shape after having a week to prepare, which led to them being quick on their feet against Purdue.
“We did a balance of rest, skill work… and we scrimmaged because I wanted to make sure, we kept our game rhythm going,” Fralick said.
The Spartans are ranked second in the Big Ten in steals per game, averaging 12.3, and their constant pressure will prove to be valuable down the stretch of this season.
If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again
Fralick has preached all season that rebounding is one of the largest factors for determining the outcome of a basketball game.
MSU winning the battle on the boards led to 11 offensive rebounds and 18 second-chance points.
Fralick knew Purdue’s size and success at Mackey could be problematic for her team, so that was the focus during practice this past week.
“They (Purdue) just beat Indiana, they were handily up for most of the game (against Indiana), so we knew coming in… their size, we knew that could be a challenge, so we were very focused on them.”
The bigs for MSU, sophomore forward Inés Sotelo, and senior forward Grace VanSlooten highlighted the focus of the test down low. Sotelo finished the night with 12 points and four boards, while VanSlooten produced 17 points and eight rebounds.
MSU will now head back to the Breslin Center for a Top 15 rivalry showdown against the No. 9 Michigan Wolverines. Tipoff is scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 1 at 12 p.m. The matchup can be listened to on 88.9 FM or streamed at https://impact89fm.org/, with Josh Lee and Brian Rivers on the call.
