Final Four Betting: A Look at the Michigan State Spartans
Michigan State Spartans
(28-8, Midwest Region)
Sportsbook.com sponsors our looks at the Final Four teams that are going to be playing on Saturday night! We’ll continue with our look at a team that made it all the way to the National Championship Game in last season’s tournament and will hope to be making a return trip this week, the Michigan State Spartans.
How they got here: After a bit of a tumultuous regular season that included plenty of highs and lows, including an unexpected three-game losing streak dab smack in the middle of the Big Ten campaign, HC Tom Izzo has his boys playing great ball again. The Spartans took care of #12 New Mexico State 70-67, #4 Maryland 85-83, #9 Northern Iowa 59-52, and #6 Tennessee 70-69 to win the Midwest Region.
Season Highlights: It’s not often that you can go into West Lafayette and come away with a win, but this was, by far, the best win for the Spartans in the regular season. It wasn’t a particularly pretty offensive game, but both Fs Raymar Morgan and Draymond Green recorded double-doubles. Sparty enjoyed a huge 44-16 rebounding edge that day, ultimately putting down the Boilers 53-44 as four-point underdogs.
Leading Scorer: Now that G Kalin Lucas is out of the lineup for the year with a torn Achilles tendon, F Raymar Morgan has to be the man. He only averaged 11.5 points per game this year and really checked out of several critical games this year. Morgan is averaging just 12.0 points per game in the NCAA Tournament, and though that’s better than his season average, he’ll probably need to do better if MSU has plans on cutting down the nets in Indy on Monday night.
Player to Watch: It looks as though G Durrell Summers is going to be another man that steps into Lucas’ scoring shoes. He put up 21 against Tennessee for his third straight game of at least 19 points scored in this tournament. Summers has rebounded with four double digit scoring games after putting up four straight duds to end the regular season.
Expectations: At Michigan State, anything less than a National Championship is disappointing on an annual basis. However, it’s really hard to see how this team, much like Tennessee before it playing without G Tyler Smith, is going to figure out how it can win a title without its best player. Getting into the finale again would be a triumph, but either West Virginia or Kentucky would probably be able to exploit the Spartans’ weaknesses. All things considered, MSU really hasn’t had a tough road to reach the Final Four, and it’ll probably show.
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