MSU guard Gary Harris was named the Big Ten Freshman of the Week for the second time this season this morning.
Harris averaged 16.5 points, 2.0 rebounds, 1.5 steals and 1.0 assists while helping the Spartans earn wins over Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Loyola of Chicago last week. He shot 60 percent from the floor and 55 percent from 3-point range in the wins.
Harris had a season-high 20 points and made five 3s in Saturday’s win over Loyola of Chicago. He was 7 of 11 from the field, which included making 5 of 7 3-pointers. He scored a team-high 13 points against Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
Harris is averaging 13.0 points (second on team) and shooting 53.3 percent from the field this season for the Spartans (8-2), who will face Tuskegee at 9 p.m. Saturday at Jenison Field House in their only game this week.
A few football players earned honors as well by various media outlets. Offensive lineman Jack Allen was named a Second Team Freshman All-American by the College Football News. ESPN.com came out with its All-Big Ten team and running back Le’Veon Bell, corner Darqueze Dennard and punter Mike Sadler were honored.
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Congrats to Gary Harris I will go out on a limb and state Harris will earn BIG freshman of the
Year award honors Brian and be MSUs leading scorer by February.
I’m with you on that, ’81 – Harris is averaging over 15 PPG (excluding the Boise game when he got hurt <30 seconds into it) as a true freshman coming off an injury.
The only way I see him not leading the team in points is, if Trice & Denzel just take over the majority of PG duties, and Appling plays more off the ball as a scoring guard. And if that happens, that's a great scenario – Trice and Denzel have great handles and are natural point guards that can also score, and Harris & Appling have both proven to be good scorers off the ball.
Interesting to see that ESPN’s All-B1G team includes exactly one player from the conference’s best D.
MSU is #1 in scoring D – the closest team is M, which gives up over 15% more PPG than does MSU. MSU is also #1 in total D (total yards gained by opposing offense, less yards lost on sacks), with Michigan again 2nd, giving up nearly 14% more yards than does MSU. And U-M only got one guy on the first team, too!
By comparison, Ohio State had 4 all conference per ESPN, and Penn State & Nebraska 2 each. Ohio State was #7 in total D, giving up an average of 32% more YPG and 40% more PPG than MSU.
Penn State had two all conference players, and was 6th in total D, allowing 31% more YPG than MSU, and also allowed over 17% more PPG.
Nebraska, which also had two all-conference players, not only gave up 70 freaking points to Wisconsin in the B1G title game (while MSU allowed only 13, in overtime, at Wisconsin), but they finished 9th in scoring D, allowing 61% more PPG than did MSU this season.
I guess it all comes down to wins & losses with these awards. All stats courtesy of http://www.cfbstats.com/2012/conference/827/index.html
W-L is certainly a major consideration for ABT. But it can’t be the primary driver; if it were, how would 7th-place MSU tie NU for the 4th-largest player tally on this team? And wouldn’t 6-2 MI intuitively have more than two of 25 players here?
Without doing the research, I suspect individual stats are driving these awards. This isn’t to say MSU is a no-name defense so much as one that offers few weak sides to offenses. The result should be a broader distribution of tackles et. al. than that of other defenses (e.g., everything’s channeled to UW’s Borland); I’d expect stats-by-player to bear that out.
A fairer evaluation would be weighted by the team’s office and defensive rankings within the conference and nationally… less so on one stat like tackles.
The ESPN sycophants value action and a memorable play made. Rarely do those twerps take into consideration the defensive players role in the teams scoring defense or Bullough would be on the all century team.
There’s got to be a stat that evaluates a defensive players performance based on the basics like tackles, TFL, sacks, forced fumbles, INT’s and pass breakups by position. If it were weighted by the team’s performance against the run and an opponents passing efficiency. Would that not penalize teams that shut down opponents and face fewer plays against / opportunities to build stats?
Nice, people found they couldn’t even think about running on the Spartans, so less is more passing, etc. One of the reasons Brucie Jenner’s pass defense was good statistically was that you could run all over that defense, so the pass attempts were way down and thus less yards gained.
Here’s wishing a speedy recovery to Chris Solari’s wife.
During surgery, CS Tweeted this: “Izzo says replacing Draymond harder than replacing Cleaves.” What do readers think? (Did having Richardson’s talent account for any such difference?)
Previous thread, too
I think the media – especially the 4 letter variety – do what you are saying AND allow their bias to creep in and the bias is increased as the wins are increased.
Really what those toads are confirming is what we have been alluding to since 2006, Coach Dantonio and his staff coach ‘em better than the other guys or how else do you get a sum of the parts being so much better than the parts in A TEAM GAME? The Acorns gave up a zillion points and yards to both Whiskey and Bruce Jenner, but we have 1 and they have 4 star performers. Says that the Criminal Recruiter only pays attention to his stars. Remember you heard it here first, folks, this year’s records for the Acorns will be null in 5 years.
You underestimate the deep pockets of Gordon Gees legal staff he will tie up the NCAA punishment in the appelleate process for two years, so NCAA voids wins after 5 but implements the vacated losses after all appeals run out in seven years.
+ 1 on writer girl Mrs. Solari.
Yes having JR softened the blow and help fill the gap in 2001 imho
Having Bell in 2001 helped a lot as well.
Saw same Rittenburg/Bennet B1G list. My response to both was that all could immediately dismiss their list after they feined experience toward the coaches and their list. Bozos both.
Interesting in both polls, Illinois and the ‘Zags just swapped spots.
MC does NOT look nearly as lost on the floor as AP did 2 years ago AND look at AP now. People who have said that Coach Izzo and his staff can’t coach up Bigs are jealous little children trying to besmirch a great coach.
I’ve seen a lot of Spartan fans say that. From my perspective, Stephens/Izzo have improved on that score in the past two years. I’d call Suton a net success; others might say he succeeded in spite of coaches’ developmental efforts.
I miss the wisdom of guys like scott skiles & FMatt at times like this…
Agree on FMatt. Skiles talked a good game but had a knack for being wrong most of the time.
Skiles kept predicting Izzo to go 10-18 when he would end up 14-4 a lot.
Typo Skiles would predict 10-8
Rexrode predicted the 2010-11 team would win the NCAAT! Getting predictions wrong doesn’t signal an inability to understand history and compare it to the present.
depends on how often you’re wrong. Joe will tell you it’s his job to make predictions.
I agree about missing skiles and FMatt, particularly skiles.
Collateral damage from the announcement of the pay wall , Ben liked your Mt Rushmore Ben The wife and I drove to the Breslin and I kissed the S after that game, only reason not on my Rushmore is I drove to work the next Monday, a coworker told me championship tickets were 250 not 2500 and I stood up from my desk and drove to Indy for one shining moment
We used to have Rexrode for these kinds of discussions, too. Can you see Cracker chiming in with anything except how good the WMU point guard was in 2001? Or telling us in his learned opinion, JR is just better than Mateen.
Miss that with Joe too, and have found Chris and Brian entetaining.
Regarding the Draymond v Mateen question, my guess is that it had a lot to do with the fact that the 2000-2001 team had four returning seniors, Charlie Bell, Andre Hudson, Mike Chappell, and David Thomas, who all played significant minutes. This year, MSU’s only senior is Nix. Probably wasn’t as big of a leadership void after Mateen as there has been with Draymond.
Amen
+2
That’s exactly what I was looking for. Kudos! Looking forward to more from you!
Dick Vitale has lost his faith in Michigan State as a top 25 team, at least for now.
The ESPN analyst was one of 11 Associated Press voters to leave the Spartans off his ballot, as Michigan State remained at No. 19 in the latest poll.
Talk to me in March there, Duckie V. They say the individual is the last one to know when senility hits, obviously that is true.
I3T
That’s funny as hell. He still thinks NC is better than Indiana
He should stay on the rubber chicken circuit and leave the real sports reporting to folks who actually aren’t way over the hill and gone.
Dickie V. is a huge ND supporter. Wonder where the domers are on his ballot?
Dickie Vee, has been known to step a a duck, now and then,
too…………………………..