Michigan State wraps up West Coast road trip with ugly win vs. Oregon

EUGENE, Ore. — In the land of the Ducks, Michigan State’s game against Oregon Tuesday night proved to be of the ugly variety. But an ugly win beats a pretty loss.

No. 12 Michigan State fended off an Oregon squad down its top two players Tuesday night in a 68-52 win at Matthew Knight Arena. Center Carson Cooper (19 points, seven rebounds) and forward Coen Carr (15 points, eight rebounds) combined for 34 points and 15 boards in the win.

Michigan State returns home from its West Coast sweep for a noon game Saturday against Maryland at Breslin Center.

Cooper set a career high in scoring for the third time this season with 19 points, while Carr scored 15. Point guard Jeremy Fears Jr. added 14 points and five assists. For Oregon, guard Takai Simpson scored 15 points, 10 of those in the first half.

Oregon might’ve been shorthanded against Michigan State, without center Nate Bittle (ankle) or point guard Jackson Shelstad (hand), but it sure didn’t look like it as the Ducks kept within sight of the Spartans through the start of the second half. Up a slim 28-22 at halftime, Michigan State struggled to figure out Oregon’s defense that dropped in and out of zone.

Defenders dared Carr and Fears to make 3s, and though Carr made a corner 3 early in the half, Oregon started to assert itself with a 5-0 run that took the lead six minutes into the second half.

Michigan State’s most reliable source of offense proved to be Cooper, which is a sentence that wouldn’t have been typed a year ago. The 7-footer dropped in a hook shot with 13:09 to play that got Michigan State within a point, then his screen opened up a mid-range for Trey Fort, who played his most productive game in Big Ten play coming off the bench.

The Spartans led 39-38 with 11:54 to play when Oregon forward Ege Demir left the game with an injured right shoulder, which he hurt during a loose ball scramble.

If that stretch woke up Michigan State (17-2, 7-1 Big Ten), then the next stretch saw it take control. Over the final 13:09, Michigan State doubled up Oregon 30-15. Cooper played a big part on both ends, walling up Ducks forward Kwame Evans Jr. and dropping in a few key buckets of his own.

Here was where the Ducks (8-11, 1-7) really missed Bittle. Cooper went up and under a defender midway through the half, and Carr fed him again on the block for a 46-41 lead with 9:26 to go.

Fears and Fort made contributions down the stretch, but Carr used good old fashioned bully ball to stretch Michigan State’s lead. He drew an and-one cleaning up a failed lob to Fort, then he turned a big defensive rebound into a driving layup at the other end as the Spartans took their biggest lead of the game, 53-42 with 7:17 to go.

The Spartans’ lead kept growing, as Cooper set his career high with a jumper at 6:40 and Fears hit another 3-pointer with 5:19 to play for a 16-point lead.

Oregon trimmed the lead down in the final minutes, but Michigan State stayed comfortably in front off the hand of Fears.

At first, Tuesday’s game felt like a burgeoning blowout. Against an Oregon team down its top two players, Michigan State took a 13-4 lead in the first five minutes and 19 seconds.

An 11-0 run with a bucket from each of its captains fueled the separation. Carr hit his first of two first-half 3-pointers, Jaxon Kohler and Cooper turned boards into buckets, and Fears shifted gears in transition.

But that lead quickly faded as missed shots and turnovers dried up the offense for a scoreless four minutes. Carr broke the ice with a mid-range jumper with 10:41 to play in the half. That made the score 15-12 Michigan State. But it didn’t slow Oregon down much as the Ducks tied things up at 20 with 8:36 to go.

Led by guard Simpkins’ 10 points in the half, the Ducks took their first lead, 22-21, at 6:39 after nearly two minutes of scoreless basketball from both teams.

Usually against a zone like Oregon threw at Michigan State in the later stages of the half, teams have to shoot out of it from outside. The problem for the Spartans is they didn't take those shots.

Michigan State’s shooters looked hesitant as Oregon denied its options and ground down the shot clock. Teammates looked to Fears to make something from nothing, but that yielded three shot clock violations in the final eight minutes, and another miss off his dish to Carr as the halftime buzzer sounded.

On one play with 7:43, shooting guard Divine Ugochukwu put what should have been a corner 3 on the floor at the end of the shot clock. He passed it to Fears as the buzzer blared, and Fears yelled at him to shoot the ball.

Twice, Fears drove the lane looking for a foul. Instead, one of those got blocked by Evans, and another arced well beyond the rim.

A few mid-range makes opened up the game for Michigan State to take back the lead, with Fort hitting a pair of jumpers off the bench. Ugochukwu hit a 3 with less than two minutes to play off an assist from Fears. Up 28-26 on the final possession of the half, Fears passed the ball to Carr for a 3 at the end of the clock, but the ball fell short of the rim.