Michigan State basketball: Here's who Spartans will face in Big Ten tournament
Michigan State basketball knows the date and time for its first game in the Big Ten tournament this week at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
Now, the Spartans just need to find out who they’ll be playing after Sunday's upset of No. 2 Michigan. MSU, the No. 9 seed in the conference tournament will face the No. 8 seed at 11:30 a.m. (BTN) Thursday (BTN): Either Maryland or Rutgers, depending on the outcome of Sunday night’s final Big Ten regular season game — Penn State at Maryland.
If the Terrapins win, they would finish in a three-way tie with Wisconsin and Rutgers at 10-10 in conference play and claim the No. 7 seed, facing No. 10 Indiana at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. (Wisconsin wins the 3-team tiebreak with a 2-1 record against the Terps and Scarlet Knights.) That would leave Rutgers to face MSU in the first game on Thursday.
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If the Nittany Lions (who are locked into the No. 11 seed) win Sunday, however, Maryland would finish 9-10 in conference play and sit in the No. 8 seed by itself and face MSU on Thursday.
Who should the Spartans root for? They faced Maryland once this season, losing 73-55 last Sunday on the road. MSU players and coaches wouldn’t blame fatigue for the loss, but no Spartan scored more than 12 points in a game which they were never particularly close.
On the other hand, MSU split its season series against Rutgers. The Spartans dominated the Scarlet Knights in a Jan. 5 68-45 victory in East Lansing; MSU held Rutgers to 31% shooting from the field. The rematch, however, was a game the Spartans would likely prefer to forget, suffering the school’s first loss in basketball to Rutgers in a 67-37 blowout in Piscataway, New Jersey. One saving grace for the Spartans: They were clearly rusty after a 23-day layoff due to COVID-19 issues within the MSU program.
The Wolverines will be paying attention, too: Regardless of who the Spartans face Thursday, the winner of that game advances to face No. 1-seed Michigan at 11:30 a.m. Friday in Indianapolis.
Contact Ryan Ford at rford@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @theford.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State basketball: Who Spartans face in Big Ten tournament
