Valentine triple-double leads No. 13 MI St over Kansas

The senior guard had 29 points, 12 rebounds and 12 assists – the 13th triple-double in Spartans’ history – and No. 13 MI State rallied for a 79-73 victory over No. 4 Kansas at the Champions Classic on Tuesday night. MI State had eight blocked shots to Kansas’ one.

Almost 17 years later, Self and Izzo will meet once more tonight in Chicago, two future Hall of Famers guiding teams into the fifth annual Champions Classic at the United Center. If you picked the Spartans to beat that spread, you were in luck. This year’s opponent is MI State, with the Spartans looking to avenge a 61-56 loss to the Jayhawks last season. Forbes scored 13 points, and McQuaid had nine on a trio of made 3s, two coming in the most crucial moments. Harris will bring a few shooting to the Spartans, but it’s worth noting he hasn’t really offered much else as a player, so any hopes that he can develop into a Big 10 player of the year type player seem to be misplaced.

Valentine flirted with a triple-double – 13 points, eight rebounds and nine assists – in the season opener against Florida Atlantic. After that timeout, MSU outscored the Jayhawks 29-12 to complete its comeback victory over the Jayhawks, 79-73, at the United Center in Chicago.

It will be the 12th all-time meeting between Izzo, 60, and Self, 52, a sporadic rivalry that dates back to that night in Hawaii – a series that heated up during Self’s three seasons at IL and has continued as Kansas-Michigan State has become a irregular occurrence on the calendar.

“McQuaid comes in, hits two big, big time threes as a freshman, like I couldn’t even imagine doing that as a freshman”, Valentine said.

Kansas (1-1) had a 13-point lead twice in the first half, the last time at 28-15 with 6:16 to go. Kansas shot 37.9 percent from three last season and opened up against Northern Colorado shooting 15-of-26 from three.

MI State will also have to deal with inexperience this season, whereas Kansas is returning a number of upperclassmen, such as Ellis, Traylor, Frank Mason, and Wayne Selden Jr.

NOTES: MI State improved to 3-2 in the Champions Class with two wins over Kansas and one over Kentucky. MSU has played a couple other high-profile games in The House That Jordan Built. Gavin Schilling is out with a toe injury. First came the triple double stat line with more than six minutes left.

Spartans In The National Basketball Association MI State is tied for the Big Ten lead with six players on National Basketball Association opening-day rosters.

This should be an excellent game and a great follow to the Duke/Kentucky tilt. Harris looks like the most obvious candidate but he’s also likely to face a smaller player in Devonte Graham when he’s in limiting his quickness at getting to the rim. Valentine is going to limit the damage with an all-around performance and Deyonta Davis will do work for MI State on the boards, but their efforts won’t be enough to overcome the Jayhawks. He had no assists, rebounds, blocks or steals. It was December 22, 1998, and Self, then a 36-year-old head coach at Tulsa, had taken his team to Hawaii to play in something called the Pearl Harbor Classic. A win is a win, but a win of this magnitude is huge when you have younger players playing such significant minutes in significant games.

Best play: Valentine’s alley-oop to Matt Costello early on in the second half.

“We had a tough game, and it’s a credit to our program and our toughness and our ability to get up for big games”, Costello said.