Friday night in East Lansing was not the kind of evening that Spartans fans were hoping for. Michigan State came out of the gate surprisingly tight while the visiting Wolverines were surprisingly poised. A bizarre sequence in the final minutes of the first half was triggered by a controversial hook-and-hold call on Cam Ward. This call catalyzed an 8-0 Michigan run that put the Spartans in an 18-point hole in the blink of an eye. MSU managed to storm back in the second half and even briefly take the lead, but the damage done in the first half was too much to over come. The Spartans clearly ran out of gas in final five minutes as the Wolverines secured a double-digit victory at the Breslin Center. Broadly, a look at the stats sheet shows that the two teams were even in a remarkable number of areas. Turnovers, rebounds, free throws, and even two-point shooting all essentially cancelled out. But the one area where Michigan carved out an significant advantage was three point shoo...
Every night in the Big Ten has the potential for chaos, but Tuesday night's the action was particularly drama-filled. In Piscataway, New Jersey, the Michigan State Spartans trailed by as many as 12 points multiple time in the second half but rallied to tie the game with under 20 seconds to play to force overtime. In Ann Arbor, the Michigan Wolverines trialed a short-handed Nebraska squad by as many as 11 points before taking the lead in the final seconds. Depending on which set of data one believes (ESPN or Kenpom), the Spartans had only a 10-15% chance to get the win over Rutgers in the final minutes of the games. Michigan had between a 20-30% chance to win late in the second half. But both the Spartans and Wolverine escaped Tuesday evening with a win. Purdue was not so lucky in Bloomington as the Boilermakers lost to rivals Indiana by five points. Table 1 below gives the updated enhanced Big Ten standings through Wednesday night's conference action Table 1 : Enhanced Big T...