Michigan State basketball's Malik Hall misses Purdue game, could be out 'a long while'

East Lansing — The injury bug is back for Michigan State.

Senior forward Malik Hall missed Monday afternoon’s matchup with No. 3 Purdue at the Breslin Center and could be out for an extended period after aggravating a left-ankle injury in Friday night’s loss at Illinois.

“He is gonna be out for a while, maybe a long while,” Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said on the pregame show. “The preliminary stuff did not look great.”

Hall, who missed eight games earlier this season with a stress reaction in his left foot, returned to action Dec. 30 against Buffalo. In his second game back against Nebraska, Hall checked himself out in the second half when he said he felt something “funky” with his foot.

However, Hall was back the next game against Michigan on Jan. 7. That’s when Hall first hurt the ankle, rolling it late in the first half while chasing a ball out of bounds. He returned for the second half and played the next two games, scoring eight points and playing 27 minutes in a win at Wisconsin, then playing 18 minutes at Illinois before injuring the ankle and checking out of the game with a little more than seven minutes to play.

Hall was missed on Monday as Michigan State took No. 3 Purdue to the wire, losing, 64-63, when Zach Edey scored with 2.2 seconds to play and Tyson Walker's final shot at the buzzer was off the mark.

How long the Spartans will be without Hall is unclear, but it seems a quick return is unlikely.

"We were trying to win the game for him because he's crushed," Izzo said after the game. "I appreciate that Malik handled it so well and we still don't know exactly what's going on. We haven't held anything back. We knew he wasn't going to play today. But the specialists just looked at it today and he had a meeting with them by Zoom during our game.

"So, nothing looks good in the immediate future but whether it's the full year or not, we don't know."

mcharboneau@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @mattcharboneau