Michigan State’s Jaxon Kohler scores 43 in winning Moneyball championship; Holloman tweaks shin
Holt, Mich. – Michigan State’s Jaxon Kohler wrapped up a high-scoring summer with another big figure, and a summer championship to go with it. Kohler scored 43 points in leading Team Snipback to 97-81 victory over Team 5 Star Zone in the Championship Game of the Moneyball Pro-Am summer league.
What you need to know:
* Fellow Spartan Tre Holloman went down with a lower body injury in the first half and didn’t return to action. He iced his leg in the second half.
“I didn’t twist my ankle or anything, it’s my shin,” Holloman said after the game. “It should be okay.”
* Michigan State freshman Coen Carr scored 28 points for Team 5 Star Zone. He was 12-of-18 from the field, including 2-of-4 from 3-point range and 2-of-5 from the foul line.
As usual, most of Carr’s points came at the rim, usually via amazing dunks. But he added a couple of treys, a finger roll off a pretty step-through move, and an off-hand reverse lay-up with English.
* Kohler, the league’s leading scorer, was 19-of-23 from the field, 0-for-1 from 3-point range and 5-of-6 from the foul line.
* Moneyball is known for casual defense, but defensive intensity and competitiveness was the highest it had been all summer for this game.
Kohler was skillful in the post, hit a nice fall-away jumper along the baseline, and padded his numbers with six put-backs.
He was known as a high scorer in his high school career, and had a few high-scoring nights in Moneyball last year, but the points came quicker and easier this summer because Kohler is leaner and quicker.
“I would like to say I’m a lot quicker than I was last year,” Kohler said. “That’s one of the biggest things I tried to work on and this was a great platform to try to work on it.”
Kohler and the other Spartans have been busy with Michigan State workouts all summer. Those will continue to ratchet up as August turns into September.
“In the summer time I wanted to really focus on what made me a good offensive player and keep working on it,” Kohler said. “I’ve also been trying to work on my defense and lateral quickness and work on my body and keep working on it.”
* Michigan State freshman Gehrig Normand had one of his better shooting nights of the summer. He scored 24 points on 8-of-13 shooting. The 6-foot-6 wing guard was 4-of-8 from 3-point range. In the second half, he was 3-of-4 from beyond the arc in helping keep Team 5 Star Zone within striking distance.
His 3-pointer over Kohler on a switch tied the game at 51-51 early int he second half, and a 3-pointer later in the game cut the lead to 86-79, but Normand’s team couldn’t make it close at the end.
Normand also showed nifty finger roll finish off a jab-and-drive, and later offered the jab step and hit a 16-footer along the baseline.
* Kohler’s team had to win a semifinal game against Team Snipes (Jaden Akins and Mady Sissoko) in the early game on Thursday.
Holloman erupted for a team-high 31 points in the semifinal game. SpartanMag didn’t record shooting stats for that game, but Holloman nailed eight 3-pointers, the most by any player in Moneyball this season, but three short of the Moneyball record (Cassius Winston).
“He had a heck of a game,” Kohler said of Holloman.
Said Holloman: “I was hitting some tough threes and then I had a couple wide open, so I was just locking it in and then knocking them down.”
Kohler had 25 in the game.
Akins scored 37 and Sissoko scored 13.
* Notable: Kameron Hankerson scored 18 for Kohler’s team in the Championship Game. Hankerson, a 2020 graduate of Wisconsin-Green Bay, averaged 7.0 points per game last year for the Long Island Nets of the NBA G-League. He was a terrific complement to Kohler on Thursday night, with breakaway power and nice medium-range game.
COMP’S TAKEAWAY: Aside from perimeter shooter, and pull-up shooting (and the occasional display of dunking athleticism) the thing I watched most closely during Moneyball this summer was Kohler’s lateral movement. There is a lot of YMCA casualness to these games, but improved lateral movement can show itself in this league, and Kohler is trying to make progress in that area.
In March, Kohler was surpassed by fellow freshman big man Carson Cooper as a reserve because there was one thing that Cooper did better than Kohler, and that’s move his feet laterally on defense.
On Tuesday in a playoff elimination game, I focused in on Kohler as he defended point guards in space on a couple of occasions after switches. The point guards went around Kohler, but Kohler moved his feet relatively well, and definitely better than he would have a year ago.
With Joey Hauser having graduated, Michigan State has some playing time open at the stretch four position this season. Kohler’s perimeter shooting is coming around. He’s not yet ready for a Goran Suton green light from deep, but he’s working on it.
Tom Izzo said in April that he wanted to look at Kohler as an option for minutes at the four for the 2023-24 season. If nothing else, Moneyball has given Kohler an extra avenue to try to improve his defensive lateral movement and enhance his candidacy for minutes at the four with the Spartans, in addition to his usual role at the five.
Moneyball can yield a lot of fluff highlights and misleading stats, but Kohler used Moneyball this summer as a means of advancing his game, offensively, defensively and in terms of conditioning.
If and when his defense improves to the point that he can play 20-plus minutes per game for Michigan State, that’s when his unique scoring talent – with excellent footwork and a complete package of post moves – will come to the forefront.
As for Akins, last summer he was the show. He took it upon himself in the summer of 2022 to please the crowd with his repertoire of world class dunks. But this summer, Akins has rarely soared above the rim for high-flying showmanship, saving his legs and springs for the real season.
Last winter, he batted lower body injuries. This summer, at Moneyball, he has shown an interest in working on his medium-range game and his ability to put the ball on the deck to create offense, something he hasn’t had the luxury of doing in his first two years at Michigan State but could display in 2023-24.
Jaxon Kohler (9) and Tre Holloman (5) with Team Snipback teammates after winning the Moneyball championship, Thursday at Holt High School. Teammates include No. 6 Devan Wilson (Michigan-Dearborn 2021), No. 1 Trendon Hankerson (Akron 2023), No. 3 Cameron Shaw (Soph., University of Findlay), No. 8 Kameron Hankerson (Long Island Nets | NBA G-League), and No. 0 Grant Stockford (Fr., Adrian College). [Photo by Jim Comparoni for SpartanMag.com]
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