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Every good Michigan State Men’s Basketball team under Tom Izzo seems to have the veteran “glue guy.” This “glue guy” always seems to be an upperclassmen roleplayer who can come off the bench in occasionally critical moments to hit a big three out of nowhere and play solid defense, fire up players in the locker room when the team is playing sluggish, all while playing 15 minutes or less per game.
This is exactly the role that Kyle Ahrens has played for the last few years for the Spartans, and that was no different this year in his final season, where Kyle Ahrens played a key role for the Big Ten Champions.
Despite only averaging 13.1 minutes per game, Ahrens made a clear impact for the team every time he touched the court. With the loss of starting shooting guard Joshua Langford, the team went into the season missing elite-level shooting and defense on the wing. While Ahrens was never expected to replace Langford’s production, he was able to come in for limited minutes and play very solid defense and he had the best shooting season of his career at 39.3%.
In terms of leadership, Ahrens was frequently seen rallying teammates together on the sideline and we heard multiple reports about Kyle Ahrens challenging his peers in the locker room to try and raise their performance.
A prime example of this came in MSU’s victory against Nebraska. The Spartans went into halftime barely beating the lowly Cornhuskers. According to a report by Graham Couch of the Lansing State Journal, Ahrens went into the locker room and, in the words of Gabe Brown, “…just gave it to us straight up… A lot of cuss words. But he gave it to us straight up and we went out there and played.”
For these end of season grades, I am personally going to rate each player based on how well they play their role, not by overall production, and you will see that reflected below:
Kyle Ahrens 2019-20 Season Grade: A
Kyle Ahrens 2019-20 Season Stats: 3.6 points, 1.8 rebounds per game. 39.3% three-point shooting, 80% free throw shooting.
As you can see, there might be a bit of a dissonance between the grade I gave Ahrens and his stats, but his role on the team wasn’t to produce stats, it was to be a senior leader. In a year where Cassius Winston grappled with personal family tragedy, Ahrens stepped in to be a vocal senior leader on the team and also played some great, consistent minutes for Tom Izzo and was always ready on a moment’s notice to come in and guard starting level Division I opponents. Without Ahrens, I really don’t know if Michigan State has the season they had. For that reason, I gave Ahrens and A grade on his season.
Oh, and if you haven’t seen Kyle Ahrens and Cassius Winston kissing the Spartan logo on Senior Night, you can watch that here.
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