Michigan State basketball is back in action Friday night as they face off against the Wisconsin Badgers in Madison. The Spartans are feeling good about themselves, riding a three-game winning streak after their 61-59 win over Maryland<\/a>.<\/p>\n Friday\u2019s game will be a huge test to see where this Michigan State team is. Winning on the road in the Big Ten is tough no matter who you play, but Wisconsin is one of the best teams in the conference this season.<\/p>\n Before the game gets here, let\u2019s take a look and see just how good Wisconsin has been this season.<\/p>\n The Badgers are off to an extremely strong start this season. Wisconsin comes into this game No. 13 in the country with an impressive 15-4 record and 7-1 mark in the Big Ten. They are also the No. 1 team in the conference and the lone Big Ten team with one conference loss.<\/p>\n Wisconsin has some very impressive wins this season, including a 70-57 win in East Lansing back in December. The Badgers have also had solid wins against Marquette and Virginia as well.<\/p>\n Their one Big Ten loss this season came on the road against Penn State. Now winning on the road is difficult to do in this conference, but Penn State is arguably the worst team in the conference. So that is a pretty bad loss for Wisconsin.<\/p>\n The Badgers are coming off a close 61-59 win at Minnesota on Tuesday. However, they are pretty fortunate to have won this game considering Minnesota shot 5-for-13 from the free throw line. There\u2019s no doubt that Wisconsin is really good team, but I don\u2019t think they are a team that Michigan State basketball should be afraid of.<\/p>\n There are a lot of familiar faces on this Wisconsin team that have been around for quite some time. However, they are led by sophomore AJ Storr who is averaging 15.3 points per game. I\u2019m sure you will recognize the names Tyler Wahl and Steven Crowl as well. The two Wisconsin big men are both averaging over 11 points and five rebounds per game, but it\u2019s Crowl who the Spartans really need to watch out for. Crowl is the best shooter on the team at 57.8% from the field and a blistering 52 percent from 3-point land.<\/p>\n One other player to keep an eye on is junior guard Chucky Hepburn. His stats don\u2019t jump out at you, but he is the guy who gets the offense going for Wisconsin. He is the team leader in assists at 3.9 per game and when it gets down to crunch time, he tends to be \u201cthe guy\u201d for the Badgers like Tyson Walker<\/a> is for Michigan State.<\/p>\n This would easily be the best win for Michigan State if they are able to pull it out. A road win against the No. 1 team in the conference would bolster anyone\u2019s resume. MSU needs these marquee wins added to their resume, and this is as good of a chance as they\u2019ll have the rest of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What do we know about the Badgers?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":12810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[190,189,504],"class_list":["post-12768","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\/12768","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=12768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Wisconsin’s season in review<\/h3>\n
Key players to watch<\/h3>\n