“As a kid, you dream of playing in the NCAA tournament,” Ahrens said. “One game ago, I was playing through the pain with my back and everything. Now, I have to sit out. I’ll do everything I can to get everyone on the bench riled up.”Ahrens represents the spirit of this team. The toughness and togetherness.
Source: Detroit Free Press
Tom Izzo still did not have a definitive answer on Kyle Ahrens’ availability for the NCAA tournament. However, he is expecting the worst for the Michigan State basketball junior forward after the left ankle injury he suffered in Sunday’s 65-60 Big Ten tournament championship win over Michigan at United Center.
Source: Detroit Free Press
He knew it was where he belonged, with his teammates. Who were trailing 41-34. It took a FaceTime talk with his younger brother at Ohio State to let him know he was needed. “He told me, ‘You need to go out there ASAP and go talk to them, because that will change the momentum of the game,’” Ahrens said. “He was right. I owe AJ all the credit on that one.”
Source: Detroit Free Press
“I got you. I’m about to go off.” To say that the senior shooting guard from Texas kept his promise doesn’t capture what he did for MSU in the Big Ten tournament title game against Michigan on Sunday at the United Center. For he did so much more.
Source: Detroit Free Press
Kyle Ahrens smacked the floor after a layup Saturday, in a game he didn’t think he’d play against Michigan. It changed everything.
Source: Detroit Free Press
Tom Izzo does not expect Michigan State basketball’s Nick Ward to return for Saturday’s showdown against Michigan. However, Izzo said he hopes to have Kyle Ahrens back for No. 9 MSU when it hosts the seventh-ranked Wolverines in what has once again become a battle for a share of the Big Ten title.
Source: Detroit Free Press
Ward, who broke his left, shooting hand on Feb. 17 against Ohio State, is scheduled to visit the doctor on Wednesday, and Izzo said that “what he does for the next two weeks is yet to be seen”. That leaves the door open for a potential return on Saturday for the season finale against Michigan or for next week’s Big Ten tournament.
Source: mlive.com
Izzo said Ahrens remains “day to day, if that.” “The guy is a kamikaze pilot, so he’s one tough S.O.B.,” Izzo said during his weekly news conference on Monday. “I can’t tell him to play at three-quarters speed or half-speed, it’s just not in his DNA. So the only way I can maybe hold him down a little bit, at least in practice, is to not let him and see if we can get that thing as healed as we can or as unsore or stiff as we can. …
Source: Detroit Free Press
Now a 22-year-old who has suffered a series of injuries, Ahrens has been playing through a lower back ailment most of the season and missed three games. He’s still a blue-collar player but is taking a new approach.
Source: mlive.com
Kyle Ahrens sat out practice Thursday as No. 10 Michigan State basketball prepared to face No. 7 Michigan on Sunday. But one player did get in some work: Nick Ward. The junior forward didn’t participate in the walk-through with his teammates, but did light shooting with both hands around the basket.
Source: Detroit Free Press
It was a heartbreaking moment on the basketball court, in front of everyone, when Kyle Ahrens re-injured his right foot during a practice in late October 2017. The injury, a Jones fracture to the fifth metatarsal his right foot, devastatingly happened minutes into his first practice of the season. He was coming back from a stress fracture in his right foot during the summer and was hopeful to rejoin the Spartans line-up.
Everything began way back during his childhood days, in his family‘s laundry room of all places. “We had this little toy hoop in there and Kyle spent hours of shooting on it before he could even walk,“ his mother Susan says with vivid recollections of Ahrens‘ basketball beginnings.
Source: The Only Colors
Tom Izzo said Ahrens “wasn’t feeling great” going into the Iowa game, after returning to the court Monday with 12 minutes at home against Maryland. The coach said he was not sure if his 6-foot-6 forward would be available for Sunday’s game at Purdue (1 p.m., CBS).
Source: Detroit Free Press
For the first time in at least a couple of weeks, the injury news around Michigan State is starting to become less grim. The sixth-ranked Spartans knocked off No. 13 Maryland, 69-55, on Monday night at the Breslin Center, and they had the benefit of doing so with junior guard Kyle Ahrens back in the lineup. It was his first game back after missing the previous two games with a back injury.
Source: Detroit News
Michigan State won on the road Sunday at Penn State with a lineup much more dependent on first-year players than at any point this season. Expect the same thing when No. 6 Michigan State travels to Nebraska on Thursday as junior Joshua Langford almost certainly will miss his fifth game with an ankle injury, and fellow junior Kyle Ahrens is day-to-day with a back sprain.
Source: Detroit News
Joshua Langford is getting closer to a return, at least Tom Izzo believes. Still, No. 6 Michigan State basketball’s coach ruled his junior guard out for his team’s game Sunday at Penn State.“We’d be a much better right now with Josh,” Izzo said Thursday. “And I hope we get him back soon.” It will be the fourth straight game without Langford for MSU (14-2, 5-0), on a nine-game win streak after Tuesday night’s 77-59 win over Purdue.
Source: Detroit Free Press
Kyle Ahrens, a junior guard at Michigan State, and his brother, Justin, a freshman guard at Ohio State, will square off in an early Big Ten showdown in Columbus on Saturday.
Source: Detroit News
Michigan State’s basketball team is about to attempt to take down one of the longstanding truths of college hoops — that role players don’t travel. Meaning, the Matt McQuaid, Kyle Ahrens, and Kenny Goins types tend to have their big games at home and shrink in hostile buildings.
Source: Lansing State Journal
The return of Kyle, a redshirt junior wing at MSU, to his home state to take on his brother Justin and the Buckeyes is a big deal in the Versailles, Ohio, community. So much that Versailles High School tried to reschedule a tripleheader on Saturday, Kyle Ahrens said, to allow supporters the chance to drive an hour and 45 minutes over to Value City Arena.
Source: Spartan Tailgate