{"id":15852,"date":"2024-03-10T22:38:36","date_gmt":"2024-03-11T02:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=15852"},"modified":"2024-03-11T15:38:48","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T19:38:48","slug":"who-will-michigan-state-basketball-play-in-the-big-ten-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=15852","title":{"rendered":"Who will Michigan State basketball play in the Big Ten Tournament?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Michigan State basketball will have to play a Thursday afternoon game in the Big Ten Tournament. Who are the Spartans matched up with?<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/michigan-state-basketball-takeaways-frustrating-indiana-loss\/\">Michigan State basketball<\/a> is fresh off a frustrating 65-64 loss to Indiana on Sunday. However, it\u2019s time to turn the page as postseason basketball is upon us.<\/p>\n<p>With the Big Ten regular season complete, each team now turns their attention to the Big Ten Tournament as they will battle it out for a championship and the automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament. Let\u2019s take a look at the bracket and see MSU\u2019s path to winning a title.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">It\u2019s official <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/g4bbnX4J6i\">pic.twitter.com\/g4bbnX4J6i<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; \u15e9\u144eT \u15ef\u1587IG\u157cT (@itsAntWright) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/itsAntWright\/status\/1767001333507203412?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 11, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Michigan State opens against Minnesota<\/h3>\n<p>Michigan State earned a first round bye and the 8-seed in the Big Ten Tournament. The Spartans will play 9-seed Minnesota in the second round on Thursday at noon in Minneapolis. Yes, you read that correctly, MSU will play the hometown team in their first game. Great.<\/p>\n<p>MSU and Minnesota have played twice this year, with both teams winning at home. The first meeting saw the <a href=\"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/michigan-state-basketball-takeaways-minnesota-win\/\">Spartans win in East Lansing 76-66<\/a>. The return game at Minnesota later in the season saw the Gophers get the <a href=\"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/michigan-state-basketball-takeaways-loss-at-minnesota\/\">narrow 59-56 victory<\/a>. I think it\u2019s safe to say that this will be yet another close game on Thursday.<\/p>\n<h3>MSU\u2019s likely path to the championship game<\/h3>\n<p>The winner of Michigan State\u2019s opening game will get a date on Friday with 1-seed Purdue in the quarterfinals. That is obviously a scary matchup, but I think the Spartans would stand a decent chance. They only lost by six at Purdue in their only meeting, so I think the Spartans could pull off the upset on a neutral court.<\/p>\n<p>After that, we don\u2019t know who MSU would play next. Four-seed Northwestern is the most likely opponent for the Spartans in the semifinals, but I could see two other teams making a run. Five-seed Wisconsin has been struggling but they could turn it on and make it to the semifinals as well. But a dark horse in that section of the bracket is 12-seed Maryland. They\u2019d have to win three games just to get to the semifinals, but I think the Terps could beat the Rutgers, Wisconsin, and Northwestern to get there.<\/p>\n<p>Finally would be the championship game, and your guess is as good as mine as to who MSU would play there. Two-seed Illinois will probably make it from that half of the bracket, but anything is possible in March.<\/p>\n<p>The most important thing for Michigan State basketball is obviously the first game. The Spartans may still need to do some work to get into the NCAA Tournament, and a win against Minnesota would erase any lingering thoughts of being left out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who do the Spartans face?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":15912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[190,189,504],"class_list":["post-15852","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\/15852","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=15852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}