Mar. 6—To say Sunday afternoon will be bizarre for Joshua Langford might be an understatement. When Michigan State hosts Michigan at the Breslin Center, it will be Senior Day, and Langford, technically, is a senior, the only one on the Spartans' roster. But there will likely be no Senior Day festivities. After all, only a handful of parents will be in the building, anyway. And, of course, .
Norsemen Best Minotauros in OT
ST. CLOUD The St. Cloud Norsemen secured another Friday night win in overtime, beating the Minot Minotauros 4-3.
The Norsemen opened up a nice lead in the first period. St. Cloud scored two unanswered goals to move ahead of the Minotauros.
Minot scored their first goal early in the second period to close the gap to 2-1. The Norsemen lit the lamp for the third time and extended their lead to 3-1. The Minotauros notched one more before the period ended to cut their deficit to 3-2.
The Minotauros tied the game again with the only goal of the third period, sending it into overtime. In the extra period, it was the Norsemen who had the final say. St. Cloud scored the game-winning goal at the 54-second mark to come out on top.
THE OVERVIEW
It s those guys again, just a little down the road and with a championship locked up this time.
The stakes for the Spartans remain high. They re the last at-large in the Bracket Matrix field, which hasn t yet been updated for them getting whooped yesterday. Bart Torvik s updated projections also have them as the last team to make it, though that means only a 22.3% chance of securing an at-large bid. They need a win on Sunday or they ll need to make some noise in the Big Ten Tournament to not be sweating out every one-bid conference s tournament.
Speaking of the BTT, Michigan is obviously locked into the one-seed, which means they re keeping an eye on Thursday s 8/9 matchup. MSU is currently projected as the nine-seed and would stay there with a win and/or an Indiana loss to Purdue on Saturday afternoon. If MSU loses and Indiana wins, however, the Hoosiers would jump the Spartans and knock them down to the ten-seed.
Seth s graphic [click for big]:
We ve gone with Gabe Brown and Rocket Watts as starters, because who starts is always up in the air and they ve played the most minutes recently. Also we ve got two rows for the bench, because MSU.
[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the preview.]
THE THEM
One thing you can say for Michigan State is there sure is a lot of it. A whopping twelve players have played at least 10% of MSU s minutes; Kenpom s lineup guess shows six different bodies playing some minutes at center. Tom Izzo has been running a blender all year as he tries to find lineups that work and frequently ends up starting guys who play 10-12 minutes. Only two guys are significantly above 20 MPG. Most assertions of who will start and what role they will play are low confidence.
Norsemen Split Another Weekend Series with Bismarck
ST. CLOUD The St. Cloud Norsemen once again came up short in game two of the weekend series against the Bismarck Bobcats.
St. Cloud opened up the scoring with their first goal at the 3:32 mark of the opening period. Bismarck responded with three goals to take over the lead.
The Norsemen closed the gap to 3-2 in the second period, but the Bobcats scored one more in an empty net at the end of the third period to win it 4-2.
Logan Kittleson and
Josh Langford made 23 saves and allowed three goals in the loss.