Michigan State basketball<\/a> plays its final marquee non-conference opponent of the season on Saturday afternoon. The Spartans take on the Baylor Bears in Detroit at Little Caesars Arena. Tom Izzo\u2019s<\/a> squad will have its hands full as Baylor is off to an impressive start. The Bears enter this game undefeated at 9-0 and ranked No. 6 in the country.<\/p>\n These programs have a little history between them.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a quick look at the series history between these two elite programs before the game on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, Baylor leads Michigan State in the all-time series 2-0. I think Spartan fans are used to leading most teams in their all-time series, so this surprised me a little. Baylor hasn\u2019t been a great program until recently, but these two matchups are both in recent years when they were very good. So that probably explains why they have this series lead.<\/p>\n The first meeting between these two came in 2016 in the Bahamas in the Battle 4 Atlantis. The 20th-ranked Bears dominated the 24th-ranked Spartans in the second half en route to a 73-58 victory. The next matchup, in 2021, was eerily similar to the first. These two teams once again played in the Battle 4 Atlantis, this time in the championship game. The unranked Spartans trailed No. 6 Baylor by only two points at the half, but the Bears once again dominated the second half and won 75-58. Those two final scores being nearly identical is a wild stat.<\/p>\n Michigan State is going to have a tough time getting its first win against Baylor on Saturday. As mentioned, Baylor is one of the best teams in the country, ranked No. 6 and undefeated. Michigan State, on the other hand, has had an abysmal start, currently sitting at 4-5. Baylor is only favored by 4.5 points, so Vegas thinks this should be a close matchup.<\/p>\n The Spartans need a win badly. A loss to Baylor doesn\u2019t negatively impact the season like some of our other losses have. But a win is exactly what we need to strengthen our NCAA Tournament odds and turn this season around.<\/p>\n This game has that feeling where we win a game we shouldn\u2019t, so I hope that feeling comes true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Who leads the all-time series?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":10079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[190,189,504],"class_list":["post-10012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","tag-michigan-state-basketball","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Baylor leads the all-time series 2-0<\/h3>\n
Can Michigan State turn the tide on Saturday?<\/h3>\n