What we learned about Michigan State players from Week 2 at Moneyball Pro-Am

LANSING - When you read that Michigan State transfer guard Trey Fort score 58 points in a Moneyball game on Thursday night at Lansing Eastern High School, that news might come with a slight shoulder shrug. We’ve seen mediocre college players ring up 40-plus points at the Lansing Pro Am League.  But there’s a few things I would point out about Fort’s outburst on Thursday. First of all, it followed a 53-point performance on Tuesday. His 53 and 58 are the two highest-scoring games of the Moneyball Pro-Am season thus far. But here’s the noteworthy item: I charted Fort at 9-of-13 from 3-point range in the first half of Thursday’s game. I missed much of the second half while interviewing Jeremy Fears in the hallway, so I didn’t see most of Fort’s second-half shot attempts. So I can’t give you a full rundown on his shot accuracy, but I can tell you that he was 12-of-18 on the 3-pointers that I saw him attempt. Those are NBA-range 3-pointers, but the way. Some were open. Some were contested. You can say that no defense is played at the Moneyball Pro Am, but you would be wrong. Defensive effort is sporadic, it’s not non-existent. And know this: Nate Johnson of the Case Credit Union team seemed to try to match Fort in the scoring department in this game, and worked to contest several of Fort’s shots. It looked to me like he was trying to keep Fort down, which is no slight against Johnson at all. We like to see some competitive defense. (More inside SpartanMag.com)