The Michigan State Spartans (17-9, 12-3) will await the Wisconsin Badgers (19-6, 10-4) tonight in East Lansing with an eye on clinching a share of the regular season Big Ten championship. The Badgers, meanwhile, will look to give themselves a chance to extend their reign as conference champions.
The game will mark the end of the regular season for Michigan State, who has endured quite a turbulent ride. Playing one of the nation’s most difficult non-conference schedules, the Spartans stumbled to a 5-7 start to their season after being ranked third in the preseason polls.
That 5-7 start was capped off by a visit to Kohl Center against the Badgers. In that game, Devin Harris led the Badgers to a 77-64 victory with 21 points on six of 11 shooting. Boo Wade also chipped in with 15 points and 6 rebounds in a game that dropped Michigan State to 0-1 in the Big Ten.
After the loss to Wisconsin, with many people leaving them for dead, the Spartans began a hot streak that they will still be riding tonight. The Spartans have won 12 of their last 14 contests, with their two losses coming on the road against Illinois (20-5, 11-3) and Purdue (17-10, 7-7).
Since that loss to Wisconsin, Michigan State has been focused on proving that they are the third-ranked team they were expected to be, and not the team that began 5-7. With loads of talent on their roster, MSU has demonstrated that they are the former.
Michigan State is led by sophomore big man Paul Davis, who averages 15.7 points and 6.3 rebounds per game. He is quite agile for a 6-foot-11 center and promises to give the Badgers match-up problems in the post.
The Spartan backcourt has played a huge part in the team’s resurgence, opening things up for Davis on the inside. Chris Hill, a junior point guard, was selected as a second team all-Big Ten guard last season and has posted similar numbers this season. He is currently averaging 14 points and 3.9 assists a game to go with a sensational 46 percent field goal percentage from beyond the arc.
Hill is not the only Spartan lighting up the scoreboards three at a time. Fellow junior Kelvin Torbert joins Hill in the backcourt and has posted an incredible 51 percent field goal percentage from three-point range. That percentage is a massive improvement from last season’s 32 percent and is good for second in the NCAA. Torbert’s excellent three-point percentage goes along with 11.1 points per game. The extremely athletic Torbert still provides his customary tough defense.
The X-factors for Michigan State are Maurice Ager and Alan Anderson. Both players have been wildly inconsistent for the Spartans all season.
MSU head coach Tom Izzo is sure to have his team ready for a game of this magnitude. A victory over Wisconsin would guarantee at least a tie for the Big Ten title with Illinois. For Izzo, such a feat would mark his fifth regular season Big Ten championship as the coach of the Spartans.
For the Badgers, this game is just as important. In order to defend their back-to-back conference titles, the Badgers will need to win their final two games (at Michigan State and at Indiana) and hope for an Illinois loss (at Purdue and at Ohio State).
The Badgers believe that tonight’s atmosphere will give them a real feel for the games that they will play come tournament time.
“We’re playing for a title, too,” junior forward Mike Wilkinson said of tonight’s game after the Badgers’ lopsided victory over Purdue. “Now is when the games mean a lot. Now is when they become more like tournament games.”
