Upcoming schedule benefits Michigan State basketball with matchup at No. 13 Wisconsin

After being on the wrong end of poor scheduling, Michigan State basketball will benefit from the upcoming schedule at Wisconsin.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how Michigan State basketball got unlucky with its schedule in some of their upcoming games. This was in reference to the Big Ten doing Michigan State no favors in the lead up to its road games against Northwestern and Illinois.

In those matchups, both Northwestern and Illinois had two extra days rest compared to MSU. As you know, the Spartans were also the road team in both games, so that scheduling setup was not kind to the Spartans. I’m not using that as an excuse for losing, it’s just something interesting that may have had a small impact.

Now, as Michigan State heads into its game with Wisconsin, the Spartans are now benefitting from how the schedules are aligning.

Schedule benefit for MSU

This time around, Michigan State is on the receiving end of how the Big Ten scheduled this season. Instead of having two days less rest, the Spartans will have two extra days compared to Wisconsin. As you know, MSU’s last game was against Maryland on Sunday and Wisconsin plays Minnesota on Tuesday.

This extra rest should be extremely beneficial for the Spartans. Two extra days automatically means two more days to prepare for the Badgers. That is a huge deal especially when Tom Izzo is the coach. With Wisconsin playing on Tuesday, Michigan State and the staff will be able to sit down and watch that whole game live and see what they can learn about Wisconsin on the fly.

Two extra days also gives any of the Spartan players a little more time to heal up any minor injuries. I don’t believe anyone has a significant injury right now, but everyone’s probably a little banged up to some capacity.

Wisconsin, however, does benefit from being the home team in this scenario. After their game at Minnesota on Tuesday, they get to head home and recover and prepare at home. They won’t have to worry about traveling to the next game. So the fact that the game is in Wisconsin does even out this scheduling quirk a little bit.

How much does this matter?

At the end of the day, this doesn’t really matter much. Sure it may have a small impact on the game, but not to the point of deciding who wins. When looking at each team’s resume, nobody will ever point to Michigan State having extra rest compared to Wisconsin when talking about this game.

All MSU needs to do is go out and win this game. The Spartans don’t have many Quad 1 games left on their schedule, so they need to take advantage of the few opportunities still in front of them. And hopefully this scheduling quirk does help them out even just a little.