There are three ways to beat Michigan state.
They are a vertical team. They are straight up and down the court. They play tough and straightforward both offensively and defensively.
1. You play their way except your horses beat their horses. Same style, just better players or your players have better games. We don’t have the horses.
2. They have been beat by teams with a few great passing and shooting perimeter players. It’s horizontal crisp passing, deft ball handling and the ability to go cross court to get an open wingshot that can take them down. Get them to play non linear defense. Unfortunately we don’t have a good backcourt offensively like that.
3. You can get their bigs lateral. Make them move side to side. Similar to the aforementioned guard play but in a smaller area. We do have an athletic front court. We can get space down low by being athletic, moving constantly and creating open opportunities in the paint. The lateral movement low can cause gaps in the defense to shoot or can collapse outside coverage and get open looks for threes. This is the only way to beat them for us. It’s going to tire our front court starters to be active, so we need at least 5 front court guys to show up Saturday.
We would also need a sprinkling of good luck