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Nick Ward 'plays his butt off,' leads Michigan State past Rutgers

Piscataway, N.J. – Just shy of one year ago, Nick Ward sat in the visitors locker room at the Rutgers Athletic Center, trying to find the words to explain why he sat nearly the entire second half of Michigan State’s victory as he and coach Tom Izzo were hardly seeing eye-to-eye.

On Friday night following the Big Ten opener, Ward stood just a few feet from that spot and laughed about what his goal was coming into the game.

“The only thing that was on my mind about last year was I was not sitting right there,” Ward said, glancing over to the spot on the locker room bench he occupied last season.