Border Battle MSU vs Wisconsin

Who: Those stinking Badgers!
Where: Breslin, 7pm.
TV/Radio: ESPN/94.9


Badger Bits

• Bo Ryan is an enemy of the State.
• Bo Ryan and Tom Izzo are the two longest reigning coaches of the Big Ten.
• Bo Ryan hates your freedom.
• Wisconsin is ranked 5th according to KenPom
• Bo Ryan once sent a guy to dunk on his own mother because she didn't call him for a couple of weeks.
• Wisconsin leads the nation in tall white men 3 point shooting percentage. True fact.

Bo Ryan's coaching style was developed when he was locked in a cabin out in the woods from when he graduated college in 1969 until landing a job with the University of Wisconsin as an assistant in 1976. During those seven years, he was in complete seclusion excepting for the occasional trip into town for some beers, some laughs and the occasional tuggle. He had only one piece of media for his entertainment and coaching study and it was this film.

Very quick character break: This is actually really cool. I'd love to watch some of these for State.

Ryan sold his soul to the devil sometime in 2001 when he accepted the job as the Head Coach at Wisconsin. He has spent his time since blowing up kittens and electrocuting puppies.

My partner in crime, Ty, writes a series for his blog The Lions In Winter called the Watchtower. The watchtower takes the statistical tendencies of Offensive and Defensive coordinators and pits them against each other. Of all the teams in the Big Ten, there are not two teams more well-suited for this kind of review. I'd love to do it using some KenPom magic, but, alas, I do not get paid until friday. Screw it, Wisconsin hate is a special kind of hate.

Advanced KenPom Analysis

We have moar green on our screen than Wisconsin does on theirs. So that's nice. 

Keys to Victory for MSU

• Score more than 60 points
• Get transition baskets
• Don't let the white guys kill you with three balls.
• Don't let Wisconsin out rebound you too badly.
• Bring a gun to this knife fight.

Keys to Victory for Wisconsin

• Be aware of how much time is on the clock. ZING!
• Stop MSU's transition baskets
• Score more than 60 points
• Get some white guy three-ballin' action.
• Summon your inner Satan, Bo Ryan.

Very Rudimentary KenPom Analysis

MSU's one trouble area is that they turn the ball over on offense at 20.5% clip, which is good for 9th in the Big Ten. As luck would have it Wisconsin is the worst in the conference at forcing turnovers at 15.2%. Anytime you're worse than Nebraska basketball at something, you're pretty bad.

Wisconsin ranks 10th in the conference at shooting the three so the whole Wisky three-ballin' their way back into the game looks like less of an issue than usual. MSU is also defending the three really well holding their opponents to 27.9 percent from 3pt land.

Finally, MSU is just monstrous on the boards this year checking in at 1st and 3rd in the Big Ten on offense and defense respectively.  Wisconsin checks in at 7th and 5th on offense and defense rebounding.

Summary

Two typical strengths of Wisconsin are atypically weak for Wisconsin this year and more of a strength for MSU than usual this year. Where MSU struggles in turning the ball over, Wisconsin is super craptabulous at forcing turnovers. I had originally and lazily predicted a four point victory, but on paper I had no idea how absolutely well MSU is playing.Now I am predictiing incorrectly based off of KenPom data a nine point victory.

Prediction: MSU 58 Wisconsin 49.

Huge, huge dap to the Mrs. She chopped both these pics and had a teething and crying baby on her back most of the time it was happening. My wife is the most capable human being alive.

Update: 12:32 PM. The Mrs. has added a pic for OneFreeFitz in the comment section below.

Bo in the sunlight!

Michigan State Basketball and the Burden of Expectations

This year in MSU Basketball has been strange. This was the first year that I can remember in a while where MSU was not ranked stupid high in preseason polls. Draymond Green was a drill sargent in a uniform, rallying the kids with the lunch pail work ethic and every other stupid cliche you can think of. Keith Appling was the budding star and after that it was a laundry list of unknown quantities (Gauna, Byrd), underperformers(Payne, Nix, Thornton), fresh faces(Dawson, Trice, Kearney) and a one year rental in Brandon Wood.

In the pre-season there was serious talk about whether or not MSU would even make the tournament. Whispers questioning if this is the year that Izzo's streak in the Big Dance comes to an end. North Carolina didn't just represent a season opener, it was like getting run into a buzzsaw of college basketball's elite as the christening for most of these newcomers. MSU ended up losing to North Carolina by a respectable 12 points and was right there in a 74-69 loss to Duke.

Then the TRULY unexpected happened. MSU rattled off 15 straight victories. For perspective's sake, 15 straight victories has happened three times in the Izzo era. The other two? In the three straight years of final four appearances.

When I went to run the 15-4 number against years prior, I expected to find that this was a fairly exemplary record for MSU at this point in the season. However, this is VERY common under Izzo, the last team not to have a 15-4 record that wasn't the 2010-2011 failboat was the 2003-2004 Spartans.

So why celebrate such an average start for Michigan State? Well, for starters 15-4 is pretty damn good. Second, of this whole team, the only two players who saw more than 12 minutes per game last year were Appling and Green. Appling is growing into his point guard role nicely and shhh... he's only a sophmore, yet distributes the ball better than Lucas. This tracks him nicely on belonging to a very elite group of point guards by the time he leaves MSU.

When a group of young players expected to finish in the middle of the Big Ten have winning streaks in common with teams of the Izzo Golden Era, that's promising. When MSU Basketball knocks off Wisconsin at the Kohl's Center, I get excited. When MSU basketball has lost to three top 20 teams by an average of six points and beaten two other top 20 teams, they're tracking to do what Tom does best. Make deep runs in the tournament.

Last week, the chatter of MSU winning the whole Big Ten began in earnest on the message boards and people started to expect Golden Era Izzoball from this team. That, among other reasons is why losing to Michigan hurt tonight. No one likes to lose to a rival. More importantly, I think MSU fans are not ready to acknowledge Michigan basketball as a real threat again yet. But Beilein is a good coach and seemingly a decent person, he's gonna be around for a while. However, in the one to two year future, this is MSU stubbing it's toe against a quality opponent on the road in the Big Ten.

This is a year MSU was expected to finish in the middle of the Big Ten pack and they may yet do exactly that, but I don't think so. This team has accomplished several significant somethings that many other Izzo teams never did. The best part, most of these guys are just getting to know each other and it's okay to place more expectation on this team than many did to start the season. They have broad shoulders and they can take it. They're going to stub their toe a few more times this year. But the potential is so much greater than I think most of us imagined prior to this year, just wait, Tom and his boys will deliver, after all it's what an Izzo team does.