A really devastating night if you’re a Richard Pitino groupie/fanatic like I am. His team was playing great ball, he was running up and down the coach box like a young Rick Pitino. His hair looked incredible. And then the bottom just fell out of the yacht and it sunk. The boys capitulated and Purdue ran up the flag. I couldn’t bear to watch Richard’s postgame. It must have been awful for him to live through that.
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conversely if Rutgers were to lose @ Northwestern tonight Torvik projects them to finish the season squarely on the bubble (as opposed to a 10 seed right now)
Sounds right. They have a pretty clear path to .500: Sweep NW, split with Minnesota, beat Maryland and Nebraska.
If they do that, I think they are in the tourney. If they lose one of those games… the path becomes a lot more difficult.
OSU-MSU today feels like a win-win to me. Either OSU loses a home game to another bottom barrel B1G team and drops further away from us in the standings, or MSU gets one step closer to missing the tournament. I’ll be happy either way.
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This is normally the “meteor game” in football but in hoops I almost always root for OSU, unless them winning causes direct harm to UM’s conference standing.
Living in GR I know plenty of Sparties who love to chirp so I’ll definitely be pulling for an MSU loss today.
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I agree with this. I would normally be rooting for an MSU loss…but we have had a few of those already. Sonic they win, I am happy to push OSU further down the standings.
Guessing it will be an ugly game overall.
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Sparty can have a win today, as a treat. Special day.
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Yeah I agree that an OSU loss to give some more distance would be ideal. Always want a Sparty loss but there have been and will be more of those.
Osu has 4 losses with 2 games against Iowa left, and 1 against us and Illinois. I’m not worried about them. I love watching Sparty lose and want them to miss the tournament. A road win against OSU would be a boon to their Tournament chances.
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Without a snark tag, I am lost.
EDIT: I don’t think there’s any way MSU bests OSU today, does anyone else?
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I think MSU has their best game of the season and crushes OSU.
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Such a crazy season. I actually would not be shocked to see this happen. Don’t ask me the scenario in which this happens. I see Watts, Loyer and Hauser combine to hit 15 threes
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Loyer will drop 30 while defending Duane Washington so ferociously that Washington subs himself out and cries on the bench.
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Knee jerk reaction is no way. But I’m firmly in the boat of OSU not being as good as the polls/advanced metrics say they are. They’ve lost at home to Purdue, almost lost at home to Penn St., and lost to NW. If they can have those results, I don’t think it’s that out of the realm of possibility for MSU to win.
Also matchup wise OSU is one of the few teams that can’t take advantage of MSU’s glaring weakness’s. Their defensive efficiency is in the 70’s so it’s possible that MSU’s anemic offense can find some success against a bad OSU defense. Also MSU’s two weakest points on the court are PG and C, which are probably OSU’s two weakest points as well (no healthy or good PGs and all their frontcourt players are undersized PFs, not C’s). If Henry can shut down Washington, no one besides Liddell really seems like an obvious answer to score against MSU. And if OSU’s bad defense is worse than MSU’s bad offense, that could be a recipe for an upset.
Or MSU’s offense is that bad and they still can’t score ever, and OSU hits their jumpshots and blows MSU out.
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You raise a lot of good points. I think it’s fair to say that if OSU is as good as the metrics think and an upper tier B1G team then this is a game they have to go on the road and win.
I think they are playing in Columbus, no?
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My wife is a Sparty and when I read her your initial comment about MSU “crushing” OSU, she loved it it! Until, that is, I explained to her what you were doing and why! 
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Yes, it is in Columbus! Maybe both teams will think it’s on the road. Their buses will pass one another on the way. AND, the game will be written off by the B1G as a forfeit for both of them! 
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Wow so OSU is not good by those metrics and almost losing to Penn St but Wisconsin losing to Penn St shows how strong the conference is. I guess the one thing I have learned is anyone can twist and frame something as they see fit.
My bad…yes in Columbus. I thought MSU wouldn’t have 3 road games in a row. Tough break for them. 