Michigan State basketball's Tyson Walker is 'different player' late. Can he do it all game?

EAST LANSING — Tom Izzo wasn’t happy with Tyson Walker.

Which sounds strange, because the senior guard had just willed Michigan State basketball to a gut-checking grind in a win over Minnesota on Thursday by scoring 12 points in the final 3:46.

But Izzo has been demanding more and more from his star in recent weeks. And he couldn’t pinpoint why it took Walker so long to heat up.

“The last 10 minutes, Tyson Walker was a different player,” Izzo said. “It bothers me. … He was great, his attitude was great. But he was just like existing out there. I just said, ‘What are we doing?’”

Walker finished with 21 points, his 29th straight game scoring in double figures, on 7-for-13 shooting. That came after he equaled a season low 13 points on just 4-for-12 shooting in Sunday’s win over Rutgers.

But Walker also went 1-for-2 on 3-pointers, not taking one after halftime. Until his game-clinching spurt, he had taken just one shot officially and was 1-for-2 at the free-throw line in the first 16:22 of the second half after scoring eight first-half points but making just 3 of 7 shots before the break.

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In the locker room after the game, Walker said he needed to “attack the basket and try to get fouled” more than he did.

“I just didn't get any shots up,” Walker said later. “They did a good job of not letting me get any easiy looks. Yeah, they did a really good job on defense. But I just have to find a way to be more aggressive.”

He also pointed to a brief exchange he had with senior walk-on Davis Smith that sparked him.

“Towards the end game, Davis gave me the look that I wasn't playing hard enough,” Walker said. “So that's what happened. ... It's just something we got going on.”

When Walker did take flight, with the back-and-forth game tied 62-62, it changed the game.

Walker hit an elbow jumper off a Mady Sissoko screen to get his finishing flurry started. Then the 6-foot-1, 185-pound drove into the trees under the basket, drew chest-to-chest contact midair with 6-9 Minnesota big man Pharrel Payne. Walker’s layup spun around the rim and dropped, putting MSU back ahead by four.

Minnesota coach Ben Johnson likened what Walker did in the closing minutes to a boxing match: “He just wore us down a little bit.”

“It's hard to completely shut him down,” Johnson said. “I thought he did a good job just attacking. But I give our guys credit. I didn't think we had too many breakdowns on him. I thought we made them work and earn his attempts and his shots. ... He moves so much. You wear down for that one second or have that lax moment for that one second and he makes you pay.”

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After a pair of Dawson Garcia free throws cut it to 66-64, the closest the Gophers would get the rest of the way, Walker used some wizardry for another bucket. Again getting inside the paint, Walker tried to lob a pass to a cutting Sissoko that a Minnesota player deflected. It went off the backboard right back to Walker, who tipped it in for his third straight bucket.

“Basketball gods,” is how he explained the play.

Seconds later, Walker plucked his third steal of the game — his most since getting six against Penn State on Jan. 4 but he only had one in the Spartans’ previous three games. He took off running and got fouled, making both free throws.

“Defensively, he’s got a whole other notch. You saw it in the last 7 minutes,” Izzo said. “And why, I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s saving himself. I don’t know if whatever, whatever. I gotta meet with him on that, because he’s just too good a player on both ends.”

Walker pulled a defensive rebound after a Minnesota miss on the following possession. After an MSU timeout, he again drove into the paint, blowing by 6-11 Garcia in front of the rim to finish off the Gophers with 1:10 to play. He hit two more free throws with 30.4 seconds to go to ice the Spartans’ second straight home win of the week.

“It's Tyson Walker just being Tyson Walker,” senior point guard A.J. Hoggard said. “He's gonna figure out a way to get it done.”

Walker, a native of Westbury, New York, opted to return for a fifth collegiate season and third at MSU to chase a national title and other individual awards. He earned All-Big Ten second team last season and this year leads the Spartans at 20 points and 31.3 minutes a game.

But Walker also is a marked man by opposing defense, who have been increasingly more physical with him. He also was dealing with a hip injury last few months and battled a bunch of other nagging in-game issues in recent weeks that he has shrugged off when asked about them. After taking another hard fall Thursday after getting undercut going for a rebound, like usual, Walker peeled himself off the floor, gritted his teeth and went back to delivering the late-game heroics MSU has become accustomed to him providing since he transferred from Northeastern before the 2021-22 season.

And the Spartans (11-7, 3-4 Big Ten) need more of them as they hit the road for the next two games, starting Sunday at Maryland (noon/CBS).

“It's good. To get stops towards the end of the game and to score the ball every time down, whether it was a free throw or if I was just scoring the ball, it's definitely good to do,” he said. “We gotta build off of it.”

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

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Next up: Terrapins

Matchup: Michigan State (11-7, 3-4 Big Ten) vs. Maryland (11-7, 3-4).

Tipoff: Noon Sunday; Xfinity Center, College Park, Maryland.

TV/radio: CBS; WJR-AM (760).

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State basketball's Tyson Walker still a star in crunch time