The Michigan Wolverines' basketball defense shut down MSU's offense in its 77-68 win on Saturday in a fashion that no team had done against the Spartans so far this season.
Not only was Michigan State's 33.3 shooting percentage its lowest of the year, but its third worst of the last three seasons dating back to the start of the 2017-18 campaign.
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In other words, only two other clubs have held MSU to a lower shooting percentage than Michigan did on Saturday in the Spartans' last 98 games, dating back to the beginning of 2017-18.
The two occurrences were when Texas Tech limited Michigan State to just 31.9 percent in last year's Final Four, and when Syracuse only let MSU shoot 25.8 percent in the second round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament.
To further exemplify Michigan's outstanding defensive performance on Saturday, consider this: MSU had shot worse than 38 percent in a game only three times over the last three seasons entering play this past weekend.
The table above exemplifies how seldom Michigan State has been held below 39 percent in a game over the last three seasons, with Michigan owning two of the 10 occurrences on the chart (this past Saturday, and the 2018 Big Ten Tournament semifinal win).
Holding MSU to just 26.1 percent from behind the three-point arc played a large role in Michigan's defensive effectiveness, with Saturday standing as the Spartans' sixth worst showing of the year from deep.
What was perhaps more vital, though, was the way the Maize and Blue limited senior point guard Cassius Winston from the field, thanks in large part to the effectiveness of junior guard Eli Brooks.
Brooks guarded Winston for the majority of the game, and even though the Detroit native scored 20 points on the afternoon, it came on just 5-of-18 shooting.
That equates out to a connection rate of 27.8 percent, with Michigan shutting the veteran guard down in a way that had seldom been seen since the start of last season.
Saturday was Winston's fourth worst shooting game of the year, with the only three worse occurrences being the 23.1 percent he shot in a Dec. 14 win over Oakland, and the 25 percent he hit in losses to Virginia Tech and Wisconsin.
Perhaps what's most encouraging about the Wolverines' defensive effectiveness against Winston, though, was the fact that head coach Juwan Howard figured out a way to contain the senior point guard after he had consistently torched the Maize and Blue in the two programs' last four meetings.
Winston had shot an average of 47.8 percent from the field in MSU's last four matchups with Michigan prior to Saturday, and had averaged 24 points per outing.
While Michigan State head man Tom Izzo undoubtedly got the better of the U-M staff in the Jan. 5 meeting, Howard made an array of impressive adjustments this time around and subsequently outcoached Izzo in just his second meeting against the Spartans.
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