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Host Bella Johnson discusses a tough week for Michigan State Hockey with hockey reporter Maddy Warren and recaps everything you need to know in the MSU sports world.
The State News sports reporters discuss all MSU sports.
(Bella) Welcome back to the sports roundtable podcast. I'm your host, Bella Johnson and today I'm joined by Maddy Warren. Maddy, if you want to go ahead and introduce yourself really quick.
(Maddy) Yeah. Hi, I'm Maddy. I'm the men's hockey beat reporter for the state news. Happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me
.
(Bella) Yeah, I'm so glad that you could make it. A lot happened this week, but also not a lot kind of like a weird balance of things. We actually pretty deep into the offseason, we got some football news. So they hired a new defensive line coach Darren Reynolds, and I know, you know a little bit about that. What like, what do you think about it?
(Maddy) Yeah. So when the news came out, it was midweek last week. I saw some mixed reviews just sort of brief about it for the website. Some fans seemed to think it was an interesting choice for hire. But obviously, Reynolds has our he's coming to MSU. from Stanford, he has coaching experience with three different NFL teams, including the Indianapolis Colts. And he was also on the coaching staff when Oklahoma made the college football playoff in 2015. So should be interesting to see if his past successes, you know, can translate here at MSU. Obviously, Michigan State's defensive line struggled a lot last year with injury and suspension and all of that. So there are definitely a need for some help.
(Bella) Yeah, and obviously, we're never really going to know how something's going to turn out until the season starts. So it should be really exciting to see. kind of bouncing off of some of the suspension struggles that the team had last year, it was announced that Khary Crump was sentenced to 12 months of probation and 80 hours of community service for his misdemeanor assault charges from the tunnel incident, which feels like so long ago now. But I was still coming from that.
(Maddy) I know. I remember like Christmas Eve, I think it was announced that he was like some of the charges were gonna like be dropped. I think so it was. It's been a long time process, obviously, all the legal stuff.
(Bella) Yeah, it's long time coming. And it just keeps more news just seems to keep coming from that. But your forte is in hockey, obviously as the hockey reporter. They had a weekend, kind of a brutal weekend, soda. And I know you were covering those games. Obviously, Friday night was really, really rough. And Saturday was not as bad but I mean, it's it's tough to get an eight No, shut out and then move on to the weekend.
(Maddy) Yeah, I mean, Friday night, that was their worst loss of this season eight oh, like, I think it was also Minnesota's season high of the amount of goals they scored against an opponent. So it was just not a good look for them. Not a lot of positive takeaways from Friday. It wasn't even like Michigan State started off well, and then it kind of fell apart at the end like Minnesota came out and scored immediately. Like good. Logan Cooley scored nine seconds in and it was just kind of like, kept getting so much worse. As the game went on. Just like kept twisting the knife as I like to say. Yeah, so Saturday was obviously better for them. And they came out really strong. It was some of the best hockey I've seen them play all season. And then they had a lead up to one there, which was I think the first time they've led against Minnesota all season. And about halfway through the second period. The wheels just kind of fell off the bus, especially when DeAngelo Russell had that big hit there. And you got ejected from the game. And after that it just kind of went downhill from there for them.
(Bella) Yeah, I was watching the beginning of that I wasn't able to catch the Friday night game. It was looking at updates on my phone, which was hard to keep wanting to check. But I did watch the beginning of Saturday night's game and it was going decently well, for like the first period and a half, two periods. They were skating really well. They were keeping up the fast pace. Obviously, they took the lead for some time there. But Daniel Russell getting ejected from the game obviously had a huge impact just solely from he's a goal scorer. He gets assessed he just has a really large impact on the team. And I think The freshmen are really the standout players this season. And you could really tell that on Saturday night
(Maddy) Right? I mean, I think anytime you lose, think you're starting minger for the rest of the game, that's gonna hurt you a little bit. And like you mentioned, the freshmen, there's six of them on the team this season, and all of them have been sure played at some point. And they've all made an impact, especially if we said Daniel Russel and Carson Dorward. They played together last year in the juniors, and then they came to MSU. And we've been saying all year that their chemistry has, you know, translated here at MSU from their time last year, but it was very evident on Saturday, obviously, Carson door, we're getting the first school of the night. And then Daniel Russel getting the second one to put MSU back on top. They're just really impressive performances from them in a series that wasn't so great for Michigan State.
(Bella) Yeah, it's definitely a tough one for them. It dropped them quite a bit in the pairwise rankings, which is really going to be important. If they hope to make a postseason run. They dropped to 18. Do you remember where they were at before?
(Maddy) Yeah, so going into the weekend, they were 16 or 15. Maybe they were still inside the bubble. So now obviously, at number 18, they're outside of that bubble if they want to get into the NCAA tournament. So these next three weekends, especially the series this weekend against Notre Dame is really going to make an impact whether or not they can make a tournament run get into that 16 seed teams.
(Bella) Yeah, so they got Notre Dame this weekend, and then Michigan next weekend, which is going to be another interesting series, they get to play at home, which should hopefully help because they do play really well at Mon. And the next one's neutral territory. So really, anything could happen. But it's definitely a bigger feat to try to work up back to getting into the bubble of tournament rankings instead of working to stay in them.
(Maddy) Right. And then like you said, the Michigan game. Right now they're tied with Michigan, in the big 10 standings was 24 points. So you know, if they can get a win split the series or sweeping is might be a struggle. I don't know if that will happen. But you know, any points at this point is going to help Michigan State here at the end of the season.
(Bella) Yeah. And this coming weekend is going to be the senior night for the team too. And obviously, we have some great freshman players, but we also have a lot of older senior players. I think you said eight of them.
(Maddy) Right, right. Yeah. I mean, they're losing a good chunk of the team. There are eight players in their final year. 10 possible seniors, I guess if Nico Müller and Jagger Joshua, don't use their extra year of eligibility. So you could be losing some really key players, especially Jarrod. Joshua obviously, is currently leading the team and goals. He's got 11 goals on the year. So it's definitely going to be interesting to see what happens next season. Some of these key players can carry over.
(Bella) Yeah. And then also having a lot going on this weekend was men's basketball, or the past week, I should I say better. Obviously, last week, Thursday, they went up against Iowa. And it was it was a super close game. Their start was really slow, not the best. And having starts like that is definitely going to hinder them going forward. If you're playing big team in the big 10 tournament, and hopefully the NCAA Tournament, getting off to a 10 Oh, start like that is not something you can do. It's a lot easier to win a game when you're in it from the beginning, having to come back from a deficit is definitely not something that you want to have to do. And the Iowa game to me, I was a little bit shocked when I saw how close to the game it was. But then I look back on some of the wins that I was logged over the season. They've had some pretty solid wins over ranked teams like Iowa State and Indiana. And not to be cliche, cliche, but a win is a win and getting any of those at this point is going to help moving forward.
(Maddy) Right. And then obviously Malik Hall, his injuries has been in and out this season, but he came back against Purdue.
(Bella) I think he was back in Iowa.
(Maddy) Iowa. Okay, I'm just Malik Hall coming back for the Iowa game. He had a pretty decent performance. And Michigan State did not have an amazing game like at all, obviously, like a 20-point loss for them for the
(Bella) Purdue game. It was 77 to 61, which was really shocking considering how close it was last time they went up against each other in East Lansing. That was, it was hard to watch, I was expecting more going into it just because of how well they kept up with them last time. But obviously, on the road at Purdue, it's a tough place to play. It doesn't make losing by that much any better. But it's, it's understandable. But also I was expecting a little bit more from them.
(Maddy) Right. And then obviously, Zack at Michigan State allowed another career-high performance for him. And so now obviously, the defense didn't have they just had like a really bad performance. They're struggling, so
(Bella) Yeah, I want to say he got his I think it was 32 points. Last time we played that was his career high at the time. And then we play him again, he gets 38, which is another career high. And that's an insane amount of points. It isn't, it's amazing. Like, I can't believe that somebody could put up those kinds of numbers. But we know he's a big player. Obviously, he's a tall guy. And he is hard to defend. But the team knows that he's a tall guy going into it, they've played him before. Defensively, I think they needed to adjust themselves a little more going into the game to adapt to his style of play. And that was just a really big defensive loss for them. I think on the women's side of basketball. They've been struggling recently. Obviously, on Saturday morning, coach Merchant got to a minor accident, which meant that they were left without her for their road game against the 22nd-ranked Illinois team. So that's a huge hurdle for them to try to get over obviously, missing your head coach. I was at availability today. And interim head coach Dean Lockwood was talking about like how they had a bye week, the week before. So they coach merchant had their plan, pretty much set in stone for that game. not set in stone, but like they'd worked it out beforehand. And still traveling without her as tough. But he was talking about how now they're coming into this Nebraska game tomorrow night. And they are going to be looking to formulate something that's somewhat new from Coach Lockwood and the assistant coaches and a team. And it's their first game, really almost he was kind of saying without Coach merchant, just because she did have so much say in the week leading up to the Illinois game. So it's gonna be interesting to see how they play on the road at Nebraska
(Maddy) Right, I mean, anytime you lose your head coach, obviously you lose Suzy Merchant. What she's done here for the women's basketball program is just amazing over the years, and she's obviously a really big part of the success of the program has had, and especially this year, had some really solid games and some solid wins. So obviously, we hope she can get back soon and has a full recovery. So yeah, absolutely.
(Bella) She's still pretty much she's still day to day as of right now. We're not sure when she's going to come back. Hopefully, she'll be back by the Michigan game on Sunday. But again, no new updates really from what the team is really so far, but we're hoping she's doing well. We're hoping she's feeling better and that she can get back to the team pretty soon because it's definitely a tough loss for all of them. Another team on the road this past weekend was a gymnastics team. They put up a pretty solid meet. Nothing's it was it was a good meet all around. They obviously defeated Maryland, which is nice. You want those wins, obviously. And I want to say Skyler Schultz he was the all around champion for this meet, which is really exciting. No, but they had just an all around solid meet. It was a little close, I think in third rotation, but they ended up pulling away for that win at the end. Again, the standout freshman is Nikki Smith. She's an incredible performer. She's an incredible athlete. And she was named Big 10 Freshman of the Week again this week. She got those honors last week and also co gymnast of the week, which is pretty cool. I imagine she's probably gonna get more in the future. She's really incredible to watch,
(Maddy) Right, I mean, I think this team is doing amazing things right now, obviously. We saw them take down Michigan a couple of weeks ago. So they're just at a really good spot right now.
(Bella) And they are and they're going to be back home Saturday night taking on Penn State. That should be another fun meet. attendance for the Michigan meat was insane. It was really cool to watch. I think it was sold out or close to I'm hoping they keep that energy for the rest of the season because they're a really fun team to watch. And they really deserve the hype that they're getting. I mean, they're an incredible team
(Maddy) Right, and gymnastics is such a fun sport to watch. And you know obviously, Jonathan Field House is a great environment for not only the athletes but the fans as well. So yeah, exciting stuff to come for them I think
(Bella) They dropped in the rankings from last week to 13 dropping one spot. I think they're gonna go pretty far this year. I think they have an incredible team and I think just the excitement there and you could see it every time they go out and they compete. Thank you so much Maddy for joining me today. I had a really good time talking to you.
(Maddy) Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's always fun talk hockey and other sports.
(Bella) And just to close out the episode, Happy National Women and Girls and Sports Day.
(Maddy) Of Course!
(Bella) Of course. Thank you for listening to the sports roundtable podcast. You can find it anywhere you find your podcasts. I'm Bella Johnson, thanks again for listening!