GREEN & WHITE BASKETBALL

Nick Ward leads Michigan State basketball past Oral Roberts

Chris Solari
Detroit Free Press
Nick Ward ,44, of MSU lays the ball up and in over Oral Roberts defender Emmanuel Nzekwesi to extnd the MSU lead to 66-61 late in the 2nd half of their game Saturday December 3, 2016 in East Lansing.  KEVIN W. FOWLER PHOTO

EAST LANSING – No Miles Bridges? Turn to two other freshmen.

An undersized Michigan State rode big games from Nick Ward and Cassius Winston off the bench to survive Oral Roberts 80-76 on Saturday afternoon at Breslin Center.

Yet coach Tom Izzo – dealing with a depleted roster and now without his star Bridges for “at least a couple of weeks” due to an ankle injury – couldn’t see past the rest of the Spartans’ poor effort in a game in which his bench players scored 70% of their points.

“Our energy level was not very good,” Izzo said. “Don’t be fooled by scoring. … We did not play very smart.”

Ward, the Spartans’ tallest healthy player, finished with his first double-double with 24 points and 10 rebounds. Winston had 15 point nine assists and four boards and proved to be the engine to drive MSU (5-4) out of a sluggish start against the taller and deeper Golden Eagles. Both played a career-high 26 minutes off the bench.

“He can basically get a shot whenever he wants down there,” Winston said of Ward. “There’s not a lot of people who can guard him down there.”

The undersized Spartans had just 6-foot-8 Ward and 6-6 Kenny Goins taller than 6-5 against an Oral Roberts team that used four players between 6-7 and 6-10. Their bench outscored Oral Roberts 56-0. They also managed to recover and outscore the Golden Eagles 32-26 in the paint, just getting outrebounded by one (38-37).

“It’s much harder on defense.” Ward said of playing without Bridges. “Rebounding was a little harder, because you know Miles is skying over everybody to get the rebound.”

MSU Men's Basketball Head Coach Tom Izzo ,right, looks puzzled as he instructs Josh Langford during their game with Oral Roberts Saturday December 3, 2016 in East Lansing.  KEVIN W. FOWLER PHOTO

Yet it also was a markedly flawed game against a 1-7 opponent. The Spartans got just 12 combined points out of four of their starters – Goins, Tum Tum Nairn, Matt McQuaid and Kyle Ahrens, who took leading scorer and rebounder Bridges’ spot.

Starting senior guard Eron Harris finished with 12 points for MSU, but he struggled defensively late in the game. Joshua Langford had a career-high nine points off the bench but committed two near-costly fouls in the waning minutes.

“The mistakes we made at the end,” Izzo said, “we just didn’t play hard enough and we didn’t play smart enough.”

As 6-7 Bridges sat next to Izzo and his coaches wearing a black track suit and a gray walking boot on his left foot to protect his injured ankle, the Spartans struggled to find consistency for much of the first half.

Ward and Winston helped the Spartans shoot 56.4% after intermission to get the lead following a back-and-forth opening period. Still, Izzo wasn’t pleased with how poorly freshman forward Ward played defensively. Part of it was fatigue, the 22nd-year coach said. Part of it may have been diminished aggressiveness on that side after a pair of early second-half goaltending calls.

“He played one end of the court with a lot of passion and emotion,” Izzo said of Ward. “And he didn’t play the other end of the court very well. As soon as he got tired, that was a problem. But at least Nick competed.”

Winston grabbed rebounds and pushed the ball in transition on consecutive possessions, dishing to Ward for layups in a 7-0 run early in the second half.

Then trailing by three midway through the final period, Harris hit a pair of buckets, Ward and McQuaid each drained a pair of free throws in an 8-0 run, and the Spartans started build a cushion.

In one sequence, Ward saved a loose ball from going out of bounds, heaving it back to Winston near midcourt. Winston then dribbled to the top of the key and sent a return pass into the paint for Ward, whose soft hook shot gave MSU a 66-61 lead with 5:41 remaining.

Oral Roberts wouldn’t go away thanks to Emmanuel Nzekwesi, whose slayup with 3:31 left cut MSU’s lead to four with 3:31 to play. The 6-8 freshman finished with 21 points and 13 rebounds, including 11 points and nine boards in a first-half in which the Golden Eagles’ plan was clearly evident: exploit the Spartans’ thin frontcourt.

“We thought that we could have some success down low, especially the way they started,” ORU coach Scott Sutton said of MSU’s small lineup that produced a 1-for-7 offensive start.

MSU pushed it back to seven before senseless fouls by Langford and Nairn sent Jalen Bradley to the line for four free throws. Bradley scored 10 of his 17 points in the final 2:03, including the four-point play after Langford’s foul with 20.8 seconds left to pull Oral Roberts within two points.

But Winston drained a pair of free throws with 19.9 seconds to play, and the Spartans were able to force a pair of bad three-point shots and get a rebound by Ahrens to bleed out the clock.

The Spartans remain at home Tuesday when they host Youngstown State (7 p.m./ESPNU), their second of five straight games at Breslin. They’ll have plenty to fix in the coming days.

“It’s been a little bit of a grind,” Izzo said. “Tomorrow we’re practicing twice, just so everybody knows. Maybe three times. We’re going to now take all of the fatigue and throw that out the door, and we’re going to start competing a little bit better.”

Contact Chris Solari:csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@chrissolari.

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