win over Mississippi State<\/a>.<\/p>\nI think he\u2019s going to take it to the next level on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Hoggard is going to show up in a big way and get close to a triple-double. I\u2019m not going to predict he gets there, that\u2019s too bold even for me, but his performance in this game will still be legendary. Give me 13 points, eight assists, and eight rebounds for Hoggard in this one.<\/p>\n
2. Spartans win the rebounding battle<\/h3>\n
At one point this season, Michigan State was an atrocious rebounding team. The Spartans still aren\u2019t great, but they have been much better. In their first-round win, the Spartans out-rebounded Mississippi State by six. If MSU wants a chance in this game, they\u2019re going to have to find a way to do something similar again.<\/p>\n
The Tar Heels are No. 13 in the country averaging a +7 rebound margin per game. MSU, on the other hand, is No. 163 with a +1 margin. This number has been slowly rising for Michigan State, but they haven\u2019t played a team like North Carolina.<\/p>\n
I do have some confidence in this prediction because of the way they rebounded on Thursday. MSU crashed the glass aggressively all night and also grabbed 11 offensive boards. I haven\u2019t seen the Spartans attack the rim any harder all season, so hopefully they bring that intensity again.<\/p>\n
3. Michigan State starts fast – again<\/h3>\n
Another thing MSU\u2019s struggled with this season is starting games poorly. Countless times this team has been down double digits before you even blink. They can\u2019t afford to do that against North Carolina.<\/p>\n
Against Mississippi State, they came out firing and got off to a 20-8 lead. This gave the team a nice cushion, so even when their offense struggled the Bulldogs still weren\u2019t able to make the game all that close.<\/p>\n
I predict the Spartans will get out to a similar fast start which will put the pressure on the Tar Heels. I predict MSU will start hot again and take an early 13-4 lead forcing UNC into an early timeout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Will we see a massive upset?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":16834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[217,59,190,189,504],"class_list":["post-16799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","tag-aj-hoggard","tag-featured","tag-michigan-state-basketball","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16799","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=16799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}