Couch: Swanigan might have disrupted development of Costello, Davis
EAST LANSING — Michigan State’s basketball team is better off without Caleb Swanigan.
Not because the Purdue freshman isn’t a terrific talent. And not for certain. Simply based on the information at hand.
Swanigan, Deyonta Davis and Matt Costello might have become an unstoppable trio, a three-headed force in the post unlike anything MSU basketball has ever seen.
Or they might have spent the season tripping over each other, battling to define their roles, none of them ever quite becoming what they’ve become.
Swanigan is the wide-bodied, four-star recruit who first chose MSU last spring but eventually spurned the Spartans for the Boilermakers. He’s having an impact year in West Lafayette.
So are Costello and Davis in East Lansing. MSU needs both of them on the court. That wasn’t a given when the season began. If you’d asked coach Tom Izzo over the summer who he thought would be his starting center and power forward, he’d tell you Gavin Schilling and Marvin Clark.
Costello is averaging double Schilling’s minutes, and Clark can’t get off the bench. Neither of those situations are as much the fault of Schilling or Clark as they are the development of Costello and Davis.
There aren’t many big men in college basketball worth risking disrupting what MSU has going with Costello and Davis.
“Who knows who would have played together and who wouldn’t have played together,” Izzo said Monday, on the eve of the Spartans’ lone schedule game against Purdue and Swanigan. “DD (Davis) has been phenomenal here and the other guys (Costello, Kenny Goins), and (Swanigan has) been good down there. A good deal is when it’s a good deal for both parties.
Swanigan is averaging 9.8 points, nine rebounds and has knocked down 16 3-pointers this season. He is every bit his billing. Every bit the wide-load, space-eating, strong-finishing scoring threat in the paint MSU appeared to need going into this season.
Not anymore.
Davis has turned himself into an efficient post scorer. His 7.8 points per game don’t come close to illustrating how reliable and capable he’s become. And his above-the-defense rebounds and 47 blocked shots are unique to his lanky 6-10 frame and athletic gifts.
It is Costello, though, who’s made the most surprising progress. After all, Davis is a true freshman. His growth was always more likely to be stark and rapid.
Costello, a senior, could have been a finished product by now — limited by modest athleticism, height and confidence.
Late in Costello’s junior season, he wanted nothing to do with the ball in the post. He preferred a 17-foot jump shot. Or that someone else shoot.
“Everybody wants to be somebody who they’re not,” Izzo said. “I think Matt last year wanted to be AP (Adreian Payne). He thought, ‘This is my turn to be AP.’ I said, ‘Well, Matt, you’ve gotta be Matt. You don’t shoot it like AP … We’re going to have enough shooters, we’ve gotta get a post threat, and you have post moves. You do have a jump hook. You can shoot free throws, so you gotta find a way to get fouled.’”
Costello credited graduate assistant and former MSU guard Austin Thornton with hammering that message home.
“He was telling me, ‘Fit in where you can. We’ve got shooters all over the floor,’” Costello said Monday. “And that’s not my job to be out there and doing all that kind of stuff. We need somebody in the middle, and somebody to show DD how to do it. And so I was like, ‘OK, I guess I have just stay there.’ And it’s worked out well.”
Beyond well. And beyond expectations — even Izzo’s.
In Big Ten play, Costello is averaging 12.5 points, a league-best 10.5 rebounds and 1.4 blocks.
“He (is) a strange shot blocker, because (he’s) a guy that doesn’t have great hops (and) you wouldn’t think of as a shot-blocker,” Izzo said. “He’s got great timing.”
He’s become an emotional catalyst for the Spartans. In the locker room Saturday after MSU’s 89-73 win at Michigan, Denzel Valentine’s father Carlton couldn’t stop raving about Costello.
As Carlton saw it, one sequence by Costello set the tone. He blocked Zak Irvin’s shot, pushed the ball up the floor himself and then dove after a long, loose-ball rebound near midcourt to force a jump ball.
“My man, the game changed when you dove for that ball,” Carlton excitedly told Costello. “That (game) was over!”
All of it is tied to confidence. And to opportunity. Costello’s offensive post game has raised the ceiling for this MSU basketball team. He and Davis have given MSU the element they were missing last year, the element Izzo and Co. hoped Swanigan would provide.
“Did I see it coming? I saw it gradually coming, but I think (Costello) took a monster jump,” Izzo said. “It was almost like the light went on and he said, ‘I’m going to get down there and do my work.’ I think too, in fairness to him, we started throwing it in there more. Players want you to have confidence in them without proving it, and coaches always want ‘You prove to me, and then I’ll go to you.’ This one, by necessity, we had to go to him some and he stepped up and it’s been a good marriage ever since.”
Costello and Izzo. Costello with Davis. Swanigan at Purdue.
Sometimes the best marriages are the ones that don’t happen.
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.
MSU at Purdue
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Mackey Arena, West Lafayett, Ind.
TV/radio: ESPN/WJIM 1240-AM, WMMQ 94.9-FM