Winners of five of their last six, eighth-ranked Michigan State gets a chance to avenge an earlier season loss when it welcomes Wisconsin (16-9, 8-4) to East Lansing on Thursday night.
Advertisement
He’s played 34 minutes in each of the past two games, and is averaging 17 points per game in his last three, including a career-high 21 point output in Wisconsin’s last game-a resounding road victory over Maryland.
The Badgers continued to ride the hot hand of junior forward Vitto Brown, who has experienced a resurrection of sorts in his last three outings, averaging 17.0 points and 5.7 rebounds in that span. His team-high 21 points and seven rebounds against Maryland was the best performance of his career.
Michigan State has a history of solid linebackers under Coach D. Guys like Chris Norman, Max Bullough, Greg Jones, Denicos Allen, Darien Harris and now Riley Bullough and Ed Davis have made that position one of the Spartans’ strongest in the past decade. Now the betting odds for the game have the Spartans favored to pick up the win at home. During that four-game stretch Valentine is averaging 24.5 points. seven rebounds, and nine assists. Last season, he earned first-team All-America honors along with being named the Big Ten Player of the Year and Goaltender of the Year.
In a game that could go a long way in deciding Michigan State’s tournament seeding, and Wisconsin’s bubble fate, here are the biggest x-factors for both teams.
Tipoff: 9 p.m. ET in East Lansing, Mich. Brown will go for his fourth straight double figure scoring game on Thursday night.
Since losing to Wisconsin, Michigan State has been up and down in terms of taking care of the basketball, averaging 11.8 turnovers a contest.
Redshirt freshman forward Ethan Happ scored 18 points to lead UW, which has now lost nine consecutive games at the Breslin Center. If the Terrapins need an easy game to get themselves back on track, they certainly lucked out schedule-wise here. The Wisconsin Badgers are shooting 36.2 percent from beyond the arc and 70.7 percent from the free throw line. He tacked on a couple of free throws a minute later to bump the lead to 20.
That’s not good news for a Wisconsin team that ranks last in the Big Ten in 3-point field goal percentage defense (38.2 percent), but the Badgers have held their opponent to 35.5 percent from three over the last three games. When the two teams met last, Valentine had recently returned from a knee injury but still shot 8-for-19 and scored 23 points on the afternoon.
The Badgers upset the Spartans, 77-76, on January 17.
Advertisement
It has No. 8 Michigan State approaching the final couple of weeks much like it would the postseason.
