Jefferson delivers, but MSU still falls

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Indianapolis — In her team’s biggest game of the season, Aisha Jefferson delivered.

Her teammates, though, were notably absent.

The senior forward held up her end of the bargain, scoring 23 of her team’s 54 points, but no one else scored more than eight. That, combined with getting hammered on the boards, led to MSU’s doom — a 59-54 loss to Iowa in the semifinals of the Big Ten Tournament at Conseco Fieldhouse.

It was an incredible performance, all things considered. Jefferson’s laundry list of injuries are well-documented. For her to put together an offensive game like she did while playing in back-to-back games is nothing short of amazing.

“She took over,” senior center Lauren Aitch said.

Jefferson set the tone for MSU early. After a downright awful possession to start the game that led to a breakaway layup for Iowa, Jefferson answered with a 3-pointer. She was all over, hitting buckets from everywhere. Free-throw line jumpers, post buckets, 3-pointers. Everything.

“I think it was mainly because they were playing the 2-3 zone and the middle wasn’t really guarding much and I felt like it was a good chance for me to just be aggressive there and also help my teammates get involved,” Jefferson said of her performance.

It was an inspiring performance and frankly, it’s a little troubling that it didn’t get her teammates going more than it did. Jefferson was the horse. The cart never followed.

“She kept us in it, she kept us alive,” senior center Allyssa DeHaan said. “She shot the ball great and nobody hopped on that bandwagon with her. Nobody else. We usually have three or four 12-point per gamers and we didn’t have that today.”

She left it all on the floor.

But can her teammates say the same? I doubt it.

If you take out Jefferson’s numbers, MSU scored 31 points and shot 33 percent. Although the Spartans weren’t scoring like they can, a team can make that up with avoiding turnovers and rebounding. It happens all the time. They call them ugly wins — exactly what MSU had Friday against Michigan.

Well, this was an ugly loss. Twenty-one turnovers. Minus-7 rebounding differential. Those numbers against U-M? Down to 17 turnovers and a plus-12 rebounding margin. That’s what wins games in a tournament setting.

Not to mention, MSU’s biggest strength of late has been the ability to play team basketball — everything’s balanced. It’s not uncommon for the Spartans to have four players in double figures in a given game.

Certainly not having a healthy Allyssa DeHaan affected things, but not having the senior center involved offensively very much still shouldn’t exclude the others. Junior forward Kalisha Keane shot 2-of-10, sophomore forward Lykendra Johnson extremely was quiet and Aitch never seemed to recover after some tough misses to start the game.

“We just didn’t have that good of a shooting night,” head coach Suzy Merchant said. “Kal was really off. Lykendra didn’t give us her offensive rebound putbacks like she can. (Freshman guard Jasmine Thomas), as good as she was yesterday, didn’t put the ball in the basket. Normally we have three, four scorers, and today we just really had one. It’s hard to win when you just have one kid feeling good on the offensive end.”

Iowa is a team the Spartans should’ve been able to out-muscle and intimidate inside. Instead, the offense was nowhere to be found against the league’s worst defensive team, a team that allows an average of 66.5 points per game.

Coming in, many would’ve picked the Spartans had they known Iowa only would score 59 points — its lowest output of the season. The way MSU had been playing, there would’ve been no reason not to.

It’s done and over now. The team has 14-15 days to sit on this and stew before its first NCAA Tournament game. Those two weeks should be filled with reflection of a failed opportunity. The team wanted a ring. Instead, it earned nothing but another disappointing Big Ten Tournament exit.

Matt Bishop is the State News women’s basketball reporter. He can be reached at bishop20@msu.edu.

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