Sounds Like Michigan State Vs. Minnesota Won’t Be Rescheduled. Good!
Michigan State and Minnesota postponed their Feb. 15 game to be played at Breslin Center in the wake of the mass shooting that occurred on MSU's campus the day before.
It looked as though the game could be rescheduled for March 2, as MSU is off between its Feb. 28 game at Nebraska and its Senior Day to close the regular season at home versus Ohio State. But it sounds like that won't happen now.
Tom Izzo isn't happy about it, or the Big Ten's handling (or lack thereof), either.
You can understand why Izzo is ticked off. It sounds like he's doing a lot of the heavy lifting the conference should be doing to get the game to actually happen.
But is it really worth the headache?
Getting the Minnesota game rescheduled could potentially help MSU with its seeding in the Big Ten tournament. The middle of the league standings is a complete logjam — just two games separate the No. 3 and No. 11 teams. And MSU scoring another conference win could mean the difference between playing on Thursday or Friday.
Do we really care about that, though? And do we really think MSU is going to leverage the Big Ten tournament into some boon to their NCAA tournament seeding? The Spartans' record over the last two conference tourneys is 2-2.
And you could argue it's been years since MSU's performance in the Big Ten tournament has earned it better seeding in the NCAA tournament. If anything, there are two relatively recent examples of the league tourney doing the exact opposite: In 2016 and 2019, MSU won the Big Ten tournament but still wasn't able to play itself up to the No. 1 seed-line.
Looking at the Minnesota game from an NCAA tournament perspective, there's no incentive to reschedule. The Gophers, who are dead-last in the Big Ten and own a 7-19 record, would register as a Quad 3 win at best.
That isn't doing MSU any good in the fight for a better seed in the NCAAs. The Spartans are firmly in Quad 1; only seven teams have more wins against the top quadrant than MSU. Racking up another victory against a bad team doesn't move the needle.
Also, there's the health aspect. MSU fans have long complained about their team's injury luck. Rescheduling Minnesota would mean State would play three games in five days, take four or five days off, then face the potential of playing up to four games in four days in the conference tournament. Is that the kind of stretch you really want your team dealing with right before the NCAA tournament — you know, the whole point of the entire season?