Game Preview: Michigan State vs the Golden Gophers

The Tubby Smith School of Puppy Obidience

When: Tonight, 8:30pm
Where: The Barn, Minneapolis
Channel: Big Ten Network / 94.9 FM

Michigan State 22-5(11-3) takes on Minnesota 17-10(5-9) at the Barn. For MSU, a win gets them one step closer to an outright Big Ten title. For Minnesota, a win is necessary to keep their tournament hopes alive.

For Tubby Smith, a win might be necessary to keep his 2012-2013 employment hopes alive, this is the school that fired Glen Mason after all. Although with that mean look he has, he would be a puppy trainer for the ages.

Four Factors in Conference



Uh-Oh. 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. Minnesota is deep, 41.2% of their total minutes come off the bench, good for 11th nationally.

MSU is a smidge better at the four factors on offense, but where they really dominate the Gophers is on defense. MSU is holding their opponents to a stingy 41.9 percent eFG% while the Gophers are giving up 47.9 percent. MSU is holding their opponents to 28.1% Offensive Rebounding while the Gophers are allowing 33.2% Offensive Rebounding.

How To Achieve World Domination

•  The Purdue/OSU Blueprint Won't Work Here - MSU can't just tire out the Gophers and get away with sloppy execution. Minnesota is Diet MSU, but similar enough in build and depth that simply running them out of the gym will not be enough to win the game.

•  The Above is Not Completely True - Minnesota is thin in the frontcourt. Ralph Sampson and Elliott Eliason are the only players seeing significant minutes that are over 6'8". Eliason's stats show that he is basically a placeholder, Sampson is much better. A well utilized Derrick Payne will command the low post tonight.POUND GREEN POUND.

• Which of course means - Minnesota is going to try and play small ball. So the keys there, keep Appling out of foul trouble, set up Draymond as the mismatch and rotate the guards often since that's what Tubby will be doing to MSU.

•  Austin Thornton, Keep Doing That Voodoo That You Do So Well - Austin Thornton is currently has an Offensive Rating of 128.2, but obviously doesn't play TONS of minutes. It means when he is in the game he is ruthlessly efficient on offense. Keep being ruthlessly efficient on Offense, Austin Thornton.

Prediction of Ho-Hum Accuracy: MSU by 6. MSU looks unstoppable right now and this isn't a Brain Farty team, but, this game smacks of a Brain Fart loss in the making. Also the Law Of Gus.

Bonus Bits

Little Brother Blog has a good overview on how this week's Combine is put together.The Only Colors wins, if you can call it that, the world's best pun award in it's Game Preview. ISportsWeb has a Game Preview too.

Weekend Reading Is Afraid of The Earth Destroying Polar Bears

Wisconsin Annihilation Rejoicing(WAR) and A Look Ahead

Did you enjoy Bo Ryan's Sad Panda? MLive says you can thank Austin Thornton and Keith Appling for that. Spartan State points out that this is MSU's 6th win over a ranked opponent this season. The Lady Spartans also pulled out a 62-46 victory last night to complete the sweep against the Badgers. With that huge game out of the way Banks of the Red Cedar takes a look at the Sprint to the Finish. Hammer And Rails is reporting that valued contributor D.J. Byrd has been arrested and will likely sit against MSU on Sunday. Game preview of Sunday's Purdue game on Sunday morning as well as many other places I'm sure.

Senior Night/Weekend at Munn this weekend

It's senior weekend at Munn this weekend and the icers complete their four year journey through some pretty rough hockey. Neil Koepke writes that they are putting a happy ending on these four years.

The Munn Minute has a series preview on the Alaska-Fairbanks Nanooks over on their site. The Munn Minute is doing a really nice job. If you want to follow hockey, but don't know where to start, I have found this blog helpful. But. This. Is. Amazing.

 
NFL Combine Is Next Week


Banks of the Red Cedar has some ratings on the players appearing in the draft. Mike Mayock predicts Kirk Cousins as a fourth rounder and career backup. *Sarcastic Thumbs Up*

Photo Credit: College Humor

To be clear I would take NFL backup money to hold a clipboard. Interested teams hit me up on twitter or e-mail.

MSU has started an All-America campaign for Draymond Green and Torey Krug. MSU Baseball starts it's Spring Campaign on Friday.  A UM victory over OSU really improves MSU's shot at the title, check out UM Hoops Preview of the game.

Monday Links, Winning, Haikus and METAl

The Weekend of Sports

As weekends in MSU sports go, this was a pretty damn fun one. Adrien Payne's lung condition took a hiatus as he "Unleashed the Payne" on OSU Saturday. Eleven Warriors has got your whining-free Buckeye commentary over on their site. New Spartan Blog http://www.spartanstate.com notes that the Spartans have moved up to number four in the latest BPI rankings. About the BPI rankings, I have no idea what they're based on and odds are neither to the ESPN suits who ordered them up, we'll see if their predictive magic is anything but crap or not.

Hockey won one and lost one in overtime over the weekend. SpartanDan's got some analysis at the Only Colors. Vannini's got a little more commentary over at Green Thoughts. Very detailed commentary and analysis over at The Munn Minute.

My attitude about hockey has always kind of been as follows: <Caveman voice>Red Wings GOOD, but not until playoffs. Spartan hockey very sad for long time.</end caveman voice>. Lately, my attitude has been I don't know very much about hockey, but I want to learn.

MSU Football News
 
Not very much football news to report, mostly killing time until Spring Ball. R.J. Shelton could commit to MSU on the February 25th Junior Day tweets Matt Dorsey.. He's fast, in the parlance of our times, also, it'd be nice to be done at running back before March 1st.

A Bret Bielema Haiku as regards the Rose Bowl

Thanks Every Day Should Be Saturday

just two seconds
happy beer can opening
alas, all sadness


Bonus

forty-five points
fourth best passing defense
LOLZ Bielema




Meta Note: Ty and I are working on a project of some fairly massive scope right now. Posting might take a bit of a ding the next couple of weeks. At the end though it will be all sunshine and rainbows. Pinky swear.

Monday Morning Hot Links

Yesterday afternoon, the Men's hoops team knocked off Michigan basketball 64-54 at the Breslin. An excellent win against a Michigan team who has been solid at home and kind of flaky on the road this year. Beilein is doing good things in Ann Arbor. Chris Vannini says about the Michigan State win.

While the Izzone chanted "little sister" as the final seconds counted down, don't expect "order to be restored," as it were. As I said before the game, this U-M program is still on the upswing, as is MSU (18-5, 7-3). The rivalry won't be like the old days, but this was an old-time performance by MSU.

Quick Soapboxing. I hate the "little sister" chant. It's inference of course being that being little sister is worse than being little brother. The little brother chant is juvenile, arrogant and priggish and you only hear it from the crappy Wolverine fans. The little sister chant is priggish, unoriginal(it's derived from the "little brother" chant) and sexist. Don't give the wolverines the satisfaction of making our fan base unoriginal and sexist.[/Soapboxing]

Update: In rereading you might get the impression I was picking on Vannini for pointing that out, I wasn't. I only pick on him about recruiting.


How did MSU win so well? It never hurts when Draymond "Rickety Knee" Green outrebounds the entire Michigan "We did not want to dirty our hands getting boards" Basketball team. 16-15. So the remainder of the boards picked up by MSU, 23 more to be exact, could be applied to drop the whoopings as necessary.

That wasn't all the good news though in terms of beating our friends down the road, the Lady Spartans knocked off the Lady Wolverines 65-63 in Ann Arbor yesterday. Porsche Poole was in beast mode as she dropped 23 points, grabbed nine boards and had five assists. Good win for the women as they improve to 14-9 and prepare for postseason action.

But wait, there's more... The Michigan State icers swept Ohio State on OSU's way to a ten game winless streak Hockey rankings confuse me, I do not understand how OSU could lose or tie eight straight prior to last weekend and still be ranked 10th. The wins sounded pretty convincing and prevented Spartan tailspin.

Update 2: Just found a new blog out there called the The Munn Minute. They obviously are not covering golf. Stop by and welcome them if you're into Hockey.

Football News. Congratulations to Devin Thomas and Greg Jones on winning their first of hopefully many Super Bowl rings. That was a doozy of a game was it not?

Gerald Holmes a big bodied running back out of Flint Carmen-Ainsworth committed to MSU as the first member of the class of 2013. He chose MSU over an offer from Central Michigan writes the Little Brother Blog. I've said for a while that unless Darien Harris sticks at RB MSU has no big backs after Bell. That changes with Holmes "commit". A more substantive "Here's Your Shield" later.

Are you missing football already? Tomorrow we have the Outback Bowl defensive film review coming up, c'mon back for that. Today head over to College Football Zealots and check out the 2011 Exit Survey I did for them.

Friday Morning Hot Links

Outback Bowl Film Study: The Only Colors has it. The always excellent Heck Dorland does an outstanding job breaking down a third quarter drive in MSU's comeback win against Georgia in the Outback bowl. Required reading if you miss MSU football.


Divination, Tea Leaves and Real Estate Speculation: The class of 2012 was officially signed, sealed and delivered to MSU this week. If you want an excellent and quick overview check out the Little Brother Blog's write up on 2012 MSU Defensive Recruits and 2012 MSU Offensive Recruits.If something a little more official is your bag, MSU Spartans, has all the quotes about athleticism, change of direction and toughness you could want to read. If you want the super deep dive on MSU recruits hit that link for all of the write-ups we did this week. It's lame to link your own stuff in a links post, but there are some people who only read on the weekends. Chris Vannini points out that making predictions for the class of 2012 is not possible. He also hates freedom, joy and puppies. However, he wisely points out that a retrospective recruiting ranking would be more accurate. Luckily, if you're interested in such a thing, it exists. Spartan Nation examines a retrospective ranking of the class of 2008.

Urban Warfare(Pt. 2)

This is not 'Nam, Urban. This is recruiting, there are rules.

Bret Bielema thinks that Urban Meyer is "OVER THE LINE!" So, he's going to have Alvarez talk to "the league office. I don't know maybe have them forfeit the match." The point I was trying to make in yesterday's post was if you want to say the B1G has a Gentleman's Agreement, fine.When people don't adhere to that agreement, they are not gentlemen. That's fine too. But to publicly complain that decorum has been broken but no actual rules were violated makes you look less gentlemanly.  Also, the reason so many villains are southern gentlemen is because they do their dirty work behind closed doors.

I'm done talking recruiting until camp season or the next commit.

The BasketBOWL is Sunday and MSU really needs a win. Luckily Draymond appears to be ready to go. I wouldn't count on him at full strength. No previews are up on either side yet. Go Green. Beat the Wolverines.

To 400 Wins, May There Be 400 More

Two days after my wife and I got married, we took our honeymoon. The first night after arriving we sat down to dinner and I offered a toast. "To two happy days of marriage, may there be two more." It was meant mostly as a joke and approximately 4.3 percent seriously in that we should not take a moment of our marriage for granted. Last night after Tom's four hundredth victory at Michigan State I tweeted, "Congrats to Tom. What a wonderful 400 wins, let there be 400 more." It was in honor of that toast, previously an inside joke to me and the Mrs., that I framed the tweet that way.

For Izzo, it's easy for me to look back on last night's milestone and remember a time where maybe the toast "To 200 wins, may there be 200 more." would have seemed premature. Indeed, as he approached win number 200, this from the State News.

Coach Tom Izzo will have a chance to notch his 200th win as MSU's head coach against Iowa on Wednesday.

Izzo, who is in his ninth year on the job, was asked if he'll be around for another 200 wins at MSU.

"No, I won't be around that long," he said. "I'm not saying that I'm done tomorrow, but I don't see guys going 25 to 30 years at the same place very often.

"I think coaches wear out their welcome. I don't think that's a negative, I just think that's the way it is."

Izzo seemed discontent with Michigan State at the time and perhaps we were a bit discontent with him too. At the time he was a couple of years removed from his last final four and Izzo was 10-8 on the season with an NCAA tourney bid no sure thing. He had his crack at the big time but had not yet converted it to guaranteed long-term success. It would be easy for someone to decide they could walk away and move to more fertile recruiting grounds, but that's not who Izzo is. Izzo is the kid from Iron Mountain who can jam out on the accordion.



Four short years passed which included the improbable 2005 tournament run and he notched win number 300. A more contented Izzo said:

"I wanted to tell the crowd I still have 600 wins to go to catch (all-time leader) Bobby (Knight)," Izzo said with a smile before adding he might quit at 339 to keep Heathcote No. 1. "The thing that pleased me most was having all the guys come back. More than the wins, I'm happiest that we've never backed down from playing a tough schedule."

Then in 2010, MSU alum and Dan Gilbert brought in an armada of money trucks to East Lansing and offered Tom Izzo a job. Gilbert's offer of 5 years and 30 million dollars was something that MSU or any college basketball program could not match. Izzo is a competitor and my boy Ty wrote a piece on his blog about how even though Izzo loves MSU he has the itch to slay the Balrog.

No one would have blamed Izzo a bit for leaving. The old cliche says opportunity rarely knocks twice but here for Izzo it had. The Cavaliers had MSU alum Gilbert at the helm and a chance to retain one of the most physically gifted players to play the game, LeBron James. In a parallel universe, Izzo has led James to the NBA finals and lost (James even chokes in parallel universes). Izzo knew this was his last chance to leave East Lansing for the pros and he had a decision to make.

Izzo decided that day that he was "a lifer". There will be no NBA titles for him and no dealing with overpriced crybabies. Instead, a life full of graduating young men who go on to play in the NBA, a fanbase who is honored to have him as their coach and celebrating milestones of racking up victories by the hundreds and NCAA tournament wins by the dozens.

As our friends out at State College bury their legend this week, it's important to me that we take a few minutes to celebrate ours. Even if 400 wins isn't among the most special accomplishments Izzo could count on his trophy shelf, it's coinciding with the events in Pennsylvania serve as a reminder of how lucky we are to have Izzo and what a steady hand he's been at MSU. While the idea of Tom coaching another seventeen years to get another 400 wins seems a bit unlikely I raise my figurative glass and toast to 400 wins, may there be 400 more.

The Week in Review for January 19th, 2012

MSU Football News

Recruiting Updates(Since Yesterday) - This is the time of year where you could write a recruiting update everyday and still not cross over into creeper territory of following people around. Earlier today, Matt Dorsey tweeted that Wisconsin Offensive Tackle Prospect Kyle Dodson will be on campus for an official visit. Dodson's offer sheet is bananas. If he actually shows this weekend(always a concern with a high profile potential decommitment) I'd put the odds at better than 50/50 he ends up in green and white. You don't take an official at the 11th hour without being very serious in doing so. Also, per Matt Dorsey's twitter, DT prospect Terrell Jackson has moved his visit to the weekend of the 27th. There is additional recruiting chatter, but the majority is speculative still. Perhaps more firms up over the weekend.

I always wanted to do that...

- Earlier this week, Hondo posted a story that Pat Narduzzi turned down a job offer to be the Defensive Coordinator at Tennessee. With all due respect to Hondo, I find this very difficult to believe because 1.) Hondo is the only one reporting it that isn't originating the story from spartannation.com. 2.) A million dollars is a lot of money, do you know what you can do with a million dollars? 3.) Most importantly, if someone offers you a million dollars, I think you go interview for the job, even if you have no intention of taking it.

In related and conspiratorial news, Narduzzi after deciding to stay did receive a raise, although to my knowledge that amount has not been made public. Another reason to stay may in fact be that the money might not be that big a jump. But honestly it's that UT is a trainwreck under Dooley and are hoping Narduzzi could save a sinking ship.

Senior/Shrine Bowl Practices

B.J. Cunningham - "Cunningham's route-running was also much better than anticipated. He lacks classic foot speed and does not display a deep burst, but showed enough skill to cause NFL decision-makers to believe he'll be a solid third receiver." He plays in the East-West Shrine Game on Saturday at 4p on NFL Network

Keith Nichol - "Nichol is pretty quick in and out of breaks, but he's had a lot of drops in the first two days of practice.He has soft hands when it comes to the deep ball and he judges it in the air pretty well, but on underneath passes with velocity he lets it go through his hands far too often." He's practicing for the NFLPA bowl, which apparently is not happening? There are no NFL scouts at his practice although CFL and UFL scouts are in attendance, so...? If he works on his catching no one might know he's been letting some passes go?

Or this?

Kirk Cousins, Brian Linthicum, Trenton Robinson - These three guys will play in the Senior Bowl on 1/28. "This is a great chance for me to compete against the best guys in the country," Cousins said. "I'm excited to get to prove myself all over again."Expect to hear more on this next week.

MSU Men's Hoops

A pox upon our house apparently? Honestly, 15-4 is pretty damn good considering how new this team is and as Chris Vannini writes "It's pretty hard to get a road win in the Big Ten." Also on his blog, you can vote for the most improved player on the 2011-2012 Men's team, it's currently a two-horse race between Nix and Thornton.

The next couple of games will be critical for defining the rest of the season, while Pete of the Only Colors explains that  "This isn't a real bad loss, except it was to our rival and hurt like hell." Michigan is a good team now and there's no shame in losing. Still, Mike of the Little Brother Blog writes "The Spartans Need Their Swagger, Toughness Back" With Purdue coming to town at 14-5, he's absolutely right. If the men drop three in a row this golden start to a season where not much was expected is going to start looking much less impressive.

MSU Women's Hoops

The Lady Spartans lost a tough one to Ohio State this past weekend 64-56. They fell to 12-6 and (4-1) in the Big Ten. They take on Minnesota(10-9)(2-3) tonight and Purdue(15-3)(5-0) on Monday. With an RPI of 78 they need to need to have a strong finish to make the tourney this spring.

MSU Hockey 

MSU Hockey had an Overtime win and a Win over Northern Michigan this past weekend. They improved to 12-9-3 on the season and their rating bounced up to 16th overall. They take on 19th ranked Lake Superior State on Friday and Saturday night at Munn. As I said last week Anastos' improvement of the Hockey team would be one of the biggest stories in college sports of College Hockey was a sport people got excited about.

Have a good weekend everyone!

The Rivalry: Why MSU/UM Fans Can't Have Their Cake and Eat It Too

I've felt since 2008 or so that UM Basketball and MSU football have some things in common. Both are being led by coaches that have a plan. Both programs have restored their good name from the muck of mediocrity and to be honest I like both coaches. Both programs have knocked off their hated rivals too many times in a row for it to be an accident anymore. Both programs have risen and have returned to a status that is no longer embarassing but is in fact something to proud of from a university sports perspective.

So that's why it completely chaps my ass to hear some MSU fans dismissing UM's basketball team out of hand. Your UM Brother-In-Law does the same thing to MSU when MSU delivers the beatings on the gridiron. Neither set of fans can have it both ways, either a rivalry is important or it isn't.

If I wanted to whine about how MSU is having a down year, I'd be perfectly in my rights to. MSU returns 1.5 starters in Appling and Green from the 2010-2011 cancer-ridden squad of "me first". As close to a diseased team as Izzo has had in his time at MSU. We could talk about how only five of the guys on the team even averaged more than 5 minutes a game last year. So even with all that UM managed to squeak out a one point win, despite leading the whole game, despite some of the worst late game clock management I can recall from Tom in a long time. All of those things are true.

That's not what happened here though. What happened is that the team who played a better game won. They won. That sucks. I hate it when they win. I hate it even more when we lose because of some pretty iffy gamesmanship at the end. UM fans, feel free to gloat with them braggin' rights, you earned them, until February 5th anyway. But the next time I hear a UM fan talking business about how MSU basketball is going down and how the tide has turned and I ask them about football and get the "Richrod mumble, mumble, mumble" answer, I'm done being nice about it.

Either your team won or they didn't and now the braggin' rights are yours or they aren't with no qualifications. I think this is something on which real MSU/UM fans with respect for their rivals can agree.

The Expectations Heaped Upon Izzo By Rankings

Basketball isn't totally my thing. I love watching our team and I've always said that if Izzo shot someone at midcourt during a basketball game he wouldn't get in trouble until he did it the second time. Some of my fondest MSU memories are of attending MSU hoops games. I knew I was on the right track with my wife when she started talking about playing inside/outside ball and preaching why Izzo should play zone instead of man.

However, as I started out saying, I'm happy to watch basketball passively instead of critically and it's for that reason I'm starting out with the disclaimer right now. If you want cogent or frequent basketball analysis this isn't going to be the place for it. If that's what you want and you're not already reading The Only Colors you should be. They do work. That said, on with the show.

Here comes the rain, the cold, the yuck. Where football season and tailgating starts to get a bit raw, where you come home from every game and changing back into just a shirt after wearing seven clothes makes you feel like you lost 20 lbs in seconds. As I sit and write, it's pouring cats and dogs outside and there's 25 mph winds. This is normally the time of year I pick up a Sports Illustrated and see MSU B-ball is ranked in the top 5.

This year though, Izzo enters the season ranked 28th in the Coaches Poll which isn't even really ranked. He suffered the loss of Delvon Roe several weeks ago, Korie Lucious & Garrick Sherman last season, Chris Allen the offseason before that. We graduated Kalin Lucas, Durrell Summers and Mike Kebler. We've lost six players since last year that contributed significant minutes to our 2010 MSU basketball team.

This might be the best thing to revitalize MSU basketball in a long time. What's Izzo ranked today? He isn't. He opens against #1 UNC and follows that up that by playing #6 Duke. So even if he opens 0-2 then he's still not ranked, he mulligans and he starts over. Can't lose there, you're playing with house money. He's going to be rotating in freshmen this year and lots of them. He has young players in Payne, Appling and Nix who have experience playing, but are far from savvy veterans.

He basically gets to blow up the team and start over with young, inexperienced and most importantly talented players that are malleable. A coaches dream for winning championships in the future. Who's gonna help old Tom whip this whippersnappers into shape? Draymond Green.

I've called Draymond Green in the past the Drew Stanton of Michigan State Basketball. He can do it all and sometimes does things a person would never think to do usually good, occasionally bad. He is tough, he works hard, he's a good kid and he can flat out ball. He manages to be a shining star of the team while still putting the team first. He's exactly what you want to teach all of the young pups to be and this is his team.

This is the first year in quite sometime Izzo has been freed of top 10 expectations by writers who forget that Izzo is brilliant in March and is still learning his guys in November. Izzo is free to experiment, to build, to have more teaching moments than usual. This is a year where if MSU basketball finishes in the top 3 of the Big 10 it's a joy, not an expectation. With reasonable expectations, this could be a great year for MSU basketball.

A Storm in a Teacup

Who would have known, I could have skipped the first 33 games of Spartan Basketball this season and cut right to the end. Last night's game had every single defining moment of this season all in the same game. Summers looking like a beast in the first half, Summers non-existent in the second. Flip the script for Kalin who in the first half, Kalin who's gonna kill ya in the second. Draymond's triple-double. Going down 10-0 to start the game. Being down 23 with 8:45 to go. Staging a near miraculous 21 point comeback from there.

It was all there, all of it. Yet, without watching games 1-33 I couldn't have appreciated how truly special game 34 was. Most importantly for 8 minutes and 45 seconds, I felt like a fan again. I was transformed to my 21 year old self who was in Breslin for the 114-63 pasting of Michigan in 2000. This game really turned out to be an epilogue for the regular season.

This year has led me to believe that State basketball fans have gotten fat and lazy. Izzo made the tourney, he put up a hell of a fight to a very talented UCLA team, and given the journey here, I think we all should be damn happy with that. Yet, this morning all I hear in the office is what happened? Where's our team? Blah blah blah.

I try not to be too much of a moral victory slappy, but in terms of W-L this season was and has been lost for months now. In terms of growth for Izzo and the program though, this season couldn't have been a bigger win for MSU basketball. It's good for Izzo to get knocked around a bit, it's good for the fans to get knocked around a bit. It's good for guys like Appling and Payne to be baptized by fire once in a while.

In 2014, I wonder if we don't look back at 2011 and say thank you. Thank you for a tough year that showed us what's important about our MSU basketball.