Couch: 3 quick takes on Michigan State's 69-51 win over Mississippi ...

1. The MSU backcourt we saw Thursday can take the Spartans places

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Just when you come to grips with the idea that this Michigan State basketball team isn’t long for March, they pull you back in with a performance like that.

The Michigan State backcourt we saw Thursday afternoon can beat some people. Maybe even North Carolina. They’ll likely get their shot on Saturday after dominating just about wire to wire in a 69-51 win over Mississippi State in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

Here’s the combined line for Tyson Walker, Jaden Akins and A.J. Hoggard: 42 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists, five turnovers, five steals.

There’s an old adage among coaches that I’ve repeated so many times that I’ll understand if you stop reading: To get anywhere in tournament play, you’ve got to have three guys rolling.

I’m a firm believer in this. One of the things that makes the Spartans somewhat dangerous in the postseason is they’ve got four (maybe five) players capable of getting going. One of the problems this season has been they often haven't gotten to two, let alone three.

When MSU gets what it did from Akins on Thursday — 15 points, 6-of-14 shooting, three 3s, seven rebounds, a block and a steal — and Hoggard controls the game like that — with eight points, eight assists, five turnovers and steal, a stat line that doesn’t do justice to his floor game — the Spartans are very likely to have three guys at a level that can take them places.

Especially when they get 13 rebounds out of the center position, including nine from Mady Sissoko, who looks determined not to finish his MSU career on the bench.

I think Hoggard is made for this tournament. We’ve seen it now for a couple seasons. He’s as focused as he’ll ever be in these games and that’s sometimes his issue. The key is getting Akins going early. He hit his first shot and then kept shooting. And when he didn’t shoot, Tom Izzo immediately told him to “shoot it.” His drive and dunk over a defender in the second half spoke of a guy who’d regained his confidence.

The Spartans’ backcourt was too much on both ends for a Mississippi State team that had no answer for MSU’s gap-help-defense — Illustrated by Josh Hubbard going 1-for-9 in the second half — or collective team rebounding. MSU out-rebounded the Bulldogs 35-29, with Tolu Smith getting just two.

MSU remains an imperfect team — even as the big men have improved late in the season, even as Xavier Booker has become a helpful player. The Spartans don’t have surefire pros among their core. But they’ve got a backcourt that, collectively we saw Thursday, can be too much for some teams and give MSU a chance against a lot of others.

Just have to see it again Saturday.

2. An NCAA tournament pattern is emerging for this sort of MSU team

Just as Tom Izzo is known for his team’s record in the second game of an NCAA tournament weekend (a whopping 24-7), perhaps he should also be known for what his program has done over the last decade as a 7 seed or worse in the first game.

The 9th-seeded Spartans’ win over 8-seed Mississippi State on Thursday was MSU’s fifth straight in these sort of circumstances, not counting the play-in loss to UCLA in the COVID year. And even that was a good showing much of the night.

MSU has also been in control of four of those five games — as a 7 seed against USC last season, as a 9 seed in a drubbing of 8-seed Miami in 2017 and as a 7 against 10-seed Georgia in 2015, at the beginning of the Spartans’ Final Four run. As a 7, they also narrowly beat Davidson two years ago.

These mid-seed vs. mid-seed matchups are always flawed team vs. flawed team, but MSU has either had the lesser of the flaws or been dialed in — both in focus and in game plan — to where the Spartans looked like the better team from the jump. It happened again on Thursday.

This wasn’t the case as much earlier in Izzo’s career. It could be mostly circumstance of matchups. But we’ve now seen the same first-round game several times over the past decade.

3. Freshman thoughts — the Mississippi State NCAA tournament edition

Xavier Booker continues to be a plus-minus star on this MSU team. He played 11 minutes. The Spartans were plus-13 points when he was on the floor. He’s a plus-player now. That’s been clear for a while. His length, body control and improved strength were on display with a transition bucket around a defender, under the basket on offense and defensively, where his arms are everywhere, even if sometimes he's still not in the right place.

Five points and a rebound in 11 consequential minutes, including a 3-pointer that helped separate the Spartans — two months ago, you’d never have thought that was what Booker would be contributing in an NCAA tournament game.

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.