The Wildcats hardly need a lesson on how good the Big Ten can be, but No. 3 Michigan State will try to teach them anyway.
The Spartans (15-1, 4-1 Big Ten) gave the Northwestern men’s basketball team a primer two weeks ago in East Lansing, Mich., when they outrebounded NU 46-17 en route to a 84-53 blowout victory.
And now they will open a three-game road swing in Evanston, taking on the Cats at 7 p.m. tonight at Welsh-Ryan Arena.
Coach Bill Carmody said NU (7-11, 0-6) will have to play a perfect game to beat Michigan State, which is coming off a 71-56 defeat of Ohio State.
Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said Monday that Andre Hutson — who led all scorers Jan. 10 with 19 points — will still be out with pneumonia. His absence makes NU’s unenviable task slightly easier, but still not elementary.
Without Hutson, the Spartans look almost as young as NU — they started two freshmen and two sophomores against Ohio State. But the two first-year players — point guard Marcus Taylor and power forward Zach Randolph — have done more than fill in.
“When you go to a school like Michigan State, you really don’t have a choice but to win,” guard Ben Johnson said. “The newcomers came in and realized that this is not a pushover, and they have to perform to a certain level because they’re at a school like Michigan State.”
Many had the Spartans pegged to finish worse than last season’s national championship team, but Randolph and Taylor have helped put the Spartans in a similar position this year.
Although they didn’t start right away, the freshmen got a taste of top-notch competition in practice. And since both players earned their first career starts Jan. 10 against NU, they haven’t dropped from the starting lineup.
“They didn’t have to come in and average 10 points a game,” said Johnson, who led the Cats in scoring last year as a freshman with 11.6 points per game. “They just had to come in and contribute, do the little things. As the year went on, they could start taking over and start shooting more. At the beginning, they had the opportunity to sit back and watch how the veterans conduct themselves.”
Randolph has averaged 11.4 points and 7.3 boards per game, while Taylor has contributed 8.3 points and 4.4 assists per game. In fact, the pair’s ability to step in and contribute has some people forgetting about two other recent Spartans — Mateen Cleaves and Morris Peterson, both first-round NBA draft picks this year.
“Marcus, he can run the team,” NU point guard Collier Drayton said. “Not as well as Mateen — thus far, anyway — and Zach, he’s a banger, he’s a big body. He creates space for rebounding and he makes shots.”
With the help of the team’s elder statesmen, the freshman duo not only has stepped in, but stepped up.
“They’re mature basketball players, those two guys,” Carmody said. “It says so much about the program that you lose two NBA players and you come back and you’re first, second or third in the country all year.”
