Coen Carr’s career night couldn’t have come at a better time. The Michigan State sophomore scored 15 of his team-high and career-high 18 points in the first half and the No. 2-seeded Spartans didn’t look back in their 87-62 first-round win over No. 15 Bryant on March 21 at Rocket Arena. Althou gh the Spartans (28-6) won by 25 points, the first half was anything but a blowout. Bryant came to play early, and MSU needed someone to step up. That someone was Carr, who saved his best performance of his young career for the biggest stage. “It meant a lot,” Carr said. “We’ve been saying all week that this first game is the hardest, and I just made it up that I wasn’t going to let my team lose today. I just tried to play as hard as I can, tried to get every rebound I can and just make the most of my opportunities out there.” Carr showed promise in his first game in the green and white, as he scored 14 points in a season-opening loss to James Madison in 2023. He played a lot to start the season but saw his minutes diminish as the season went on. He played only three less minutes (22) in the win over Bryant than he did in Michigan State’s four combined Big Ten and NCAA Tournament games last year (25). From there, Carr stuck with it and was ready for a sophomore breakout. He is only averaging 7.7 points per game this season but has made a bigger impact on other facets of the game. As Michigan State coach Tom Izzo has said before, some of Carr’s dunks feel like six points instead of two. The Spartans relied heavily on their high-flier’s slams early on to allow the rest of the team to gather their footing. “I think everybody just thinks there’s no process, there’s no improvement. There’s a journey for everyone,” Izzo said. “We talk about guys that were first-round picks — Morris Peterson took five years for a journey. Coen is improving, he’s getting better. He’s worked on his free-throw shooting so much, his regular shooting. He’s starting to defend better. “I just think Coen Carr is one of those guys you fall in love with because he brings energy but he works every day. He doesn’t take any days off, and he’s about as good a kid as I got.” Carr has continuously added to his game, and that was on display as his first points came on a pull-up jumper. He later showed some of the finesse in his game with a finger-roll to give the Spartans a 14-12 lead. The sequence that really got Michigan State going was late in the first half. Trailing by three, 24-21, Carr grabbed an offensive rebound and slammed it home. On the following possession, Carr got to the rim in transition and converted an and-one to put the Spartans in front. His only bucket in the second half was his most memorable with a putback poster jam. If Michigan State is going to make the deep run that it wants to, Carr will be a big part of it. “I mean, I was just trying to run the floor, be aggressive,” Carr said. “I know they’re a tough team, so I wasn’t trying to — you can’t be soft when you go down there with them. So I was trying to be aggressive and run my lane. They had me playing the five a little bit more so I had to run my lane, run to the rim, so that’s all I was trying to do. I just felt like I get to make those plays and my teammates feed off them every time. So I just try to keep doing that and I feel like that’s kind of my job on this team.” ...read more read less