EAST LANSING – The look was clean for a reason.
Michigan State’s Carson Cooper had zero 3-pointers made before squaring up at the top of the arc on Saturday afternoon.
The senior center was the trailer on the play and knocked down the first triple of his career in Saturday’s 91-48 blowout win against Maryland.
“We were making jokes about it and I was like, man, I can’t go my whole career without one,” Cooper said with a laugh. “I know I’ve been kind of shooting them here or there and I was like I just need one and I’ll sleep good tonight for sure.”
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Cooper finished the game with 14 points and eight rebounds in the latest installment of a senior surge. Hitting one triple, however, doesn’t come with license to shoot freely.
“Does he have the green light?” coach Tom Izzo said. “Are you on drugs or what?”
Cooper, who had four previous 3-point attempts in his career, took a sober approach to the situation. Michigan State was up 14 points in the first half and he had an open look so that was a good time to fire away.
“I remember seeing it go up and I knew it was going to touch nothing but net,” forward Jaxon Kohler said. “When it went through the net, it was like the cleanest, cleanest make, it was the cleanest bucket.”
After his drugs quip, Izzo slightly altered his tune about Cooper being approved to shoot from deep saying “depends what the score is,” with a laugh. He then offered a quid pro quo to Cooper, who has vastly expanded his offensive game in four seasons at Michigan State.
“He’s done a hell of a job so if he wants to negotiate with me and say that he’ll cover the ball screens and get 10 rebounds if I let him shoot a 3 or so,” Izzo said, “maybe we can negotiate that.”
A few minutes after making that statement, the words were relayed to Cooper in the locker room.
“Shoot, that seems like a good deal to me,” he said.
Cooper is averaging career highs in points (10.7) and rebounds (7.2) in his first full season as a starter. He showcased expanded range from deep during the Moneyball Pro-Am over the summer but hadn’t knocked one down from beyond the arc in an actual game since his senior season of high school at IMG Academy, until Saturday.
“It’s kind of a load off my shoulders but it’s all good fun,” Cooper said. “I wasn’t stressing about not making one but it was kind of like one of those things where I feel like with time it was going to come eventually.”
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