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.

Weekend Reading Isn't Worried About It's Discounted Goods

A Thad of an Underperformer

Men's hoops travels down to the Value City ABC Warehouse Used Drugstore PBR Emporium to play Ohio State Saturday night at 6 on ESPN. Matta's teams always look frightening in the regular season and wilt down the stretch. It's hard to get all riled up about opponents who don't win when it counts. Specifically in March.

Upon Further Review: Matta's Record in the Tourney at OSU is 10-5. Two of those years he won 34 games or more.  10-5 is respectable, four of those years they won the Big Ten. I'd expect better than 10-5 when you win the Big Ten four times.

Look into my eyes. We will in it all this year!!! Courtesy of DanOnTheStreet

Rexrode suggests OSU is becoming an MSU basketball nemesis. Jay Bilas has OSU by four.
Super recruit Gary Harris has been named a McDonald's All-American. I thought Gary Harris was from Gary Indiana, but he isn't. He's from Indianapolis. Still.

Comixed.com

I don't know squat about OSU. They have that Sullinger kid I heard. I hope we win, but that's all I can confidently predict. Wild guess: MSU by 43. Optimistically and guaranteed wrong sits ok with me.

Michigan Hockey Preview

Do you wish for an MSU blog that does great hockey coverage? Luckily, such a new blog exists. The Munn Minute has an excellent preview of the weekend series against UM. Standing room only tickets are still available for tonight's game at Munn. If you DO like hockey and DON'T mind standing to support the resurgent MSU hockey program do that. You want to get all pissed and break things in anticpation? Vannini's got your youtube adrenaline drop over on Green Thoughts.

Enemy Previews

Go Blue Michigan Wolverine has a two part preview of tonight's game without all of the obnoxious condescension of the one over at The Blog Yost Built. I'm sure MGoBlog will have a preview of quality up later today as well.

But srsly you guys The Munn Minute. Read it and know MSU Hockey better.

Acshual College Football Talk

Wooooo! We're reversing a rule we just put into place a couple years ago! The NCAA committee has recommended that kickoffs move back from the 30 to the 35 yard-line. The NCAA just moved the line back to the 30 a couple years back when they realized less touchbacks meant MOAR excitement! They also did not realize or care that it would mean MOAR injury!

The NFL, which often tweaks its rules to influence more scoring, adopted this change in March for the sake of safety. In conjunction with moving the kickoff line, the rule also prevents coverers from getting more than a 5-yard running start before the kick. Under the previous rule, would-be tacklers could mount a 15-yard head of steam before the kick.

The bulk of the proposed rule changes are related to curtailing injury. Which is always a great thing.

The Rivals Top 250 was released earlier this week and six players from Michigan made the cut. Offensive Outback Bowl review Monday or Tuesday.

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.

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!