Tip: Sunday, 4:02pm
Location: Breslin Center
TV: CBS
Broadcast crew: Kevin Harlan and Dan Bonner
The Wolverines and Spartans will close out the regular season with a good ole Hatfield’s and McCoy’s type skirmish at the Breslin Center on Sunday afternoon. The two teams are playing for very different goals. The 11th ranked Spartans are playing for a share of the Big Ten title, while Michigan is trying to even their record at .500 and gain some momentum for a miracle run in the Big Ten Tournament.
The Spartans edged out Penn State on Wednesday night to keep their conference title hopes alive. Kalin Lucas is the driving force for Michigan State; he comes in averaging 14.9 points and 3.9 assists per game. It will be Senior Night for the Spartans and I would expect that Raymar Morgan will want his last game at Breslin to be one of his best.
Zack Novak (photo-Todd White/isportsweb)
Michigan played their best game of the season on Tuesday night when they thrashed Minnesota by 28 points. I asked Zack Novak after that game if they could build off the momentum of that win and try and carry it with them to Michigan State. “Coming off a game like this [Minnesota] we’re confident,” said Novak. “We know we can play with anybody and I’m looking forward to the challenge [of playing Michigan State].”
The Wolverines are running a different practice schedule in preparation for this game. They actually bused to East Lansing Friday morning for a practice at the Breslin Center and returned home afterwards. The Wolverines will pile back into the bus on Sunday and return to East Lansing for the game. John Beilein said due to scheduling conflicts they could only hold a Saturday practice at Breslin early in the morning or late in the evening. Had they gone with the early morning practice they would have had to sit around in their hotel rooms for 24 hours. The late night practice doesn’t make sense either, so they decided to practice at Michigan State today and head back home. By doing this Beilein is hoping that his team will be fresh when they arrive on Sunday.
“If we’re going to have any success in the season, it has to go through Michigan State and it has to go through the Big Ten Tournament,” said Beilein. “It’s hard to do and Michigan State certainly has handled us for a while and we’re going have to even play better than we did today [Tuesday against Minnesota].”
I’ll explain what Beilein meant when he said “Michigan State certainly has handled us for a while.” The Wolverines have lost 10 straight games at the Breslin Center and last defeated the Spartans there in 1997. In the last 10 games in the series Michigan is 2-8 with home wins in 2006 and 2007. Thanks to Michigan’s youth and the Big Ten’s “one-plays”, DeShawn Sims is the only Wolverine to have played at Michigan State more than one time.
For Michigan to pull off the upset they will need to play like they did on Tuesday when they were all “on the same page”. They also played with intensity for the full 40 minutes and were precise in their execution on the offensive end evidenced by their 60% shooting and 4 turnovers. Defensively they have been playing well and will obviously need to continue that trend. Michigan has played some of their best basketball when their defense is wreaking havoc and leading to points off of turnovers. For example, in the first meeting between these instate rivals Michigan scored 25 points off of 18 Spartan turnovers. It was almost enough to spring the upset but the Wolverines fell agonizingly short at the buzzer.
Prediction: Michigan has all the intangibles stacked against them. They are going to have to combat a hostile crowd that loathes everything Maize and Blue. Michigan State is playing for a share of the Big Ten title and the Wolverines have enjoyed very little success against Michigan State in the last 13 years. [author adjusts his Maize and Blue goggles]. Michigan in a shocker 67-65
Notes:
- Michigan ranks 4th in the conference in scoring defense (61.6), Michigan State ranks 5th (63.9).
- This will be Michigan’s 9th game against a ranked opponent. They are 2-6 against ranked opponents this season.
About Rob WhiteCo-founder and Michigan Wolverines correspondent at isportsweb.com
I've been covering Michigan Football and Michigan Basketball since 2009.
You can follow me on Twitter @isportsRob