Tonight Michigan State takes on the Northwestern Wildcats in a conference matchup. The Spartans still have a couple more games to play before true conference play begins, but occasionally, you will see some inter-conference games like this before the real season actually starts.
As with football, you never quite know what is going to happen when you play the Wildcats. They can be having an absolutely horrible year but they will bring everything they have when they play the Spartans.
On top of that they have a coaching staff that has been building some decent teams over the years. I feel like it was only a year or two ago that Northwestern made their first trip to the NCAA tournament. They are definitely not a team you want to rest on your laurels with.
Michigan State had a pretty impressive win against Oakland University on Saturday. My hope is that they will not let that go to their heads and play a sloppy game tonight in Chicago. Strength of schedule has definitely been much harder for the Spartans, but like I said, you never know what to expect when you play Northwestern.
Turnovers will be key as they usually are for State. If they can minimize those and control the pace of the game, they should be okay. I'd like to see them coast through these next few games until they get to the start of conference play.
If you are closest to the total score of the game (MSU + NW) I will give you 10k SPORTS tokens.
For example if the final score is 76 to 50 you would want your guess to be 126. I look forward to everyones entries.