Michigan State basketball<\/a> is back in action on Thursday night against Minnesota at the Breslin Center. The Gophers (12-5, 3-3 Big Ten) come into this matchup on a little bit of a slump, but they will be a tough challenge nonetheless.<\/p>\n Before the game gets here, let\u2019s take a quick look at the series history between these two programs.<\/p>\n To no one\u2019s surprise, MSU leads the all-time series with Minnesota, but it\u2019s not by as wide of a margin as I would\u2019ve guessed. Michigan State boasts a 72-59 record against the Gophers in their 131 matchups.<\/p>\n That by no means is a poor record against Minnesota, but you typically don\u2019t think of Minnesota as being a very solid basketball program. This is typically a game you automatically mark as a win when the schedule comes out, but that’s not quite the case anymore.<\/p>\n Strangely enough, these two teams did not face each other last season. This is due to the on-campus shooting at Michigan State that took place days before these two were scheduled to play, and the two sides were unable to get the game rescheduled.<\/p>\n The last time these two teams faced off was on Jan. 12, 2022, when Michigan State won a nail-biter 71-69 in East Lansing. Joey Hauser<\/a> was the hero in this game as he scored the game-winning layup with one second left. Max Christie<\/a> also had a big game, finishing with 16 points, five rebounds and four assists.<\/p>\n Minnesota comes into this game with a 12-5 record and a 3-3 mark in the Big Ten. A 12-5 record isn\u2019t bad at all, however, their resume isn\u2019t as strong as it might suggest. The Gophers don\u2019t have a marquee win on their resume, but they do have one brutal loss to San Francisco 76-58.<\/p>\n The Gophers also come into this matchup riding a two-game losing streak. Those two losses have come to Indiana and Iowa, both of which aren\u2019t very strong teams this year.<\/p>\n This once again feels like a must-win game for Michigan State. A win doesn\u2019t help our resume much, but a loss certainly would destroy it. If the Spartans play their best ball, then there should be no reason they don’t win this game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Who leads the all-time series?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":12239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[190,189,504],"class_list":["post-12150","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\/12150","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=12150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Spartans lead the series, but not by as much as you might think<\/h3>\n
Minnesota season update<\/h3>\n