Golden Gopher Recap, the Combine and Junior Day

So, that happened. MSU was due for a brain fart of a game and they had it. They were lucky to escape with a win and that Brandon Wood found his superhero cape just in time. Keith Appling had a rough game, Sophomore is Greek for "wise fool". Draymond "B1G Player of the Year" Green had 17 points, 5 assists, 5 rebounds and 4 steals in the win.

In my first eerily accurate basketball prediction, ever. A broken clock is right twice a day, even I guess.

MSU is on a tear right now that could rip small planets in half, but these numbers suggest that Minnesota will not be an easy out. Search your feelings using your best Jedi technique, you know this to be true.

Four Factors

Gross.

So what kept MSU in the game? Getting and converting lots and lots of free throws, which you knew. Also, MSU's turnover percentage was ridiculously good. Finally,  Minny got all Cameron Fry at the end of the game instead of all Ferris Bueller. Izzo, "The only thing I would give this team credit for is, if you’re in a championship-type run, you’ve got to steal a game somewhere. … I feel very fortunate to win it but proud we found way to win a game we didn’t deserve to.” Truth.

The NFL Combine

The Combine starts today for MSU players. You can follow the athletes live-tweeting the experience of traveling to the combine, BJ Cunningham "Detroit got real life birds flyin around in the airport" and Kirk Cousins, "The Grand Rapids airport has to have one of the slowest security lines in the country for the # of ppl passing through. 20 min wait at 6 AM". Was that a complaint Mr. Cousins? Today is indeed a special day.

The Little Brother Blog has a rundown of who reports when and when their drills will be. Today's arrivals will be Edwin Baker, Kirk Cousins, B.J. Cunningham and Keshawn Martin, but they don't workout until Sunday. Follow John Kreger on twitter for twittable combine updates.

A Word on the Upcoming Junior Day

If you follow recruiting at all, you know UM filled up half their class with top 250 players last weekend. If you're a bit high strung about recruiting, you know that MSU has a junior day coming up this weekend and Mark Dantonio will not be present for it.

Here's my take. At the beginning of every Roland Emmerich movie(The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, Independence Day), some small and insignificant event happens that foreshadows the impending Ice Storm of Doom. Brady Hoke got a huge jump on closing out his class of 2013, which is not a huge deal, but this gives him more time to work on the class of 2014, etc. Dantonio will be in LA this weekend, doing something for the Nike Coaches tour, whatever the hell that is. So not only will MSU not have a committ-a-palooza with the overpriced food, water and beer like Hoke had, they likely will not have a single commit. MSU rarely takes commits when Dantonio isn't around. It's a long haul from here to Signing Day and MSU will get theirs, but, if MSU recruiting starts to get snuffed out by UM and OSU in the coming years, people will point to things like this as a reason why.

Bonus Bits

Additional postgame dissection from Green Thoughts, The Only Colors and Hey, Joe! The Munn Minute has a post on how nice ND's new arena is.