A.J. Hoggard’s season-best game brings Michigan State to new heights

Michigan State Spartans guard A.J. Hoggard (11) defends Illinois Fighting Illini forward Marcus Domask (3) at the Breslin Center in East Lansing on Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024.

EAST LANSING – After Michigan State went to the locker room as 88-80 winners over No. 10 Illinois on Saturday afternoon, three of the team’s most important members came to the same conclusion.

Senior point guard A.J. Hoggard had just put together one of his best career games: 23 points, five assists and no turnovers while hitting 12 of 13 free throws.

It wasn’t hard to see what effect that performance had on the team.

“Me, Tyson and coach all said it after the game,” Spartans forward Malik Hall said. “He’s got to play like that every game. If he plays like that every game, we’re a different team.”

Hoggard’s performance was perhaps the biggest revelation on a banner day for Michigan State. He showed energy early and played solid defense throughout on Illinois’ Marcus Domask. He more than doubled his previous season-high for free throw attempts. And he had timely baskets, erasing a six-point deficit by himself with four minutes to go and recording a steal and basket when the Spartans trailed by six in the first half.

Tom Izzo has long pointed to his senior point guard as the player whose performance dictates Michigan State’s results more than anyone else.

Saturday validated that claim.

“A.J.’s been a guy I’ve been on for four years. Tonight, you saw why,” Izzo said. “He played extremely well, he got into people defensively. I told him at halftime if we win this game I was going to kill him, because that’s what I needed on a regular basis.”

Hoggard’s play came into focus this week after Michigan State dropped a road game on Tuesday at Minnesota. Hoggard was just 1-for-6 in that game, and afterward Izzo had some not-so-veiled criticism for his point guard and how he ran the Spartans’ offense in the second half of that loss.

Hoggard, for his part, took responsibility for the performance two days later. And on Saturday, Michigan State’s offense looked vastly improved: the Spartans shot 52 percent from the field and hit a season-high 25 free throws.

“I think we did a good job of moving the ball, spacing the floor gave us more driving lanes and things like that,” Hoggard said. “So we were able to be more aggressive in space.”

Hoggard also looked like a leader on the floor, particularly when pushed his coach back to the bench and talked to Jaden Akins himself after the fellow guard received a first-half technical foul.

“I didn’t want coach to come all the way out onto the floor and get another tech,” Hoggard said. “I just tried to slow it down and take over that leader role.”

Now that Hoggard has shown he can play at that level against a top-10 team, the quest will be to sustain it through the last seven games of Michigan State’s regular season. But if he can do that, his teammates think Michigan State will look like a different team down the stretch.

“I know it’s difficult to do that every game, but the energy he brought, I think it helped him but it also helped the rest of us,” Hall said. “So I think if we can get him to play with that sort of energy, he doesn’t have to do all the scoring the points, as long as he plays with energy like that and he just leads us how we did, we’re a different team and I think that’ll go a long way for us.”

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