The Wolverines make the short trip to East Lansing to take on the Spartans in a renewal of one of the sport’s rivalries.
The Big Ten is home to a few of college basketball’s great rivalries and Friday’s lone conference game is perhaps the most important rivalry matchup in the conference this season.
Michigan and Michigan State are two of the very best teams in the country, with the Wolverines led by a rising star in Dusty May and the Spartans by the ever-resolute Tom Izzo, one of the greatest coaches in the history of the sport.
Let’s talk about the game:
Michigan Wolverines at Michigan State Spartans
- Time/TV channel: 8 p.m. ET on FOX
- KenPom spread: Wolverines by 1
Michigan’s march through the 2025-26 season has carried an air of inevitability. The Wolverines have blown out bottom feeders and fellow contenders alike in their run to a 19-1 record with a lone head scratcher of a blemish in a loss to Wisconsin at home.
Michigan State has quietly done much of the same. The Spartans’ two losses are thoroughly understandable, coming against Duke and Nebraska (imagine that sentence a few years ago). They were on a run of blowouts in their own right before a head scratcher of a close road game against a lowly Rutgers team that ended in an overtime win.
These teams know defense, with Michigan’s ranking second and Michigan State’s ranking first, both nationally, in KenPom’s efficiency metrics. The problem becomes apparent on the other end of the court where the Wolverines’ offense ranks in at 10th nationally while the Spartans sit all the way down at 43rd.
Both groups play tremendous defense, but Michigan does a better job of scoring the basketball. The Wolverines play a balanced brand of ball that keeps everyone involved with isolation mixed in. Yaxel Lendeborg is the star, but even if you slow him down you have to contend with Elliot Cadeau, Morez Johnson and Aday Mara, among others.
Michigan State’s offense is more reliant on Jeremy Fears as a distributor, which isn’t at all a bad thing. Fears has established himself as one of the sport’s premier floor generals this season with a sky high assist rate of 51.6%. The Spartans aren’t as talented as several other top teams, including the Wolverines, but they have experience and a rising star of a point guard that knows where to put the ball and when.
I’d expect May’s group to key in on trying to mitigate Fears’ impact directly on the ball or force him out of passing situations by stifling the Spartans’ frontcourt off of it. The path is less clear for Izzo’s crew, which has to play excellent, fundamental defense on all of Michigan’s starters. But it’s an Izzo group so it can absolutely do that.
Michigan has the clearer path to victory here, but it’s worth factoring in the boost Michigan State will get from the Breslin Center’s home crowd.
Category: General Sports
